Montreal Canadiens: Three Habs Records That Will Never Be Broken

Henri Richard – Most Stanley Cup victories as a player

Henri Richard is mostly known as The Rocket’s little brother. Even in a city as hockey crazed and knowledgeable about their hockey history as Montreal, the Pocket Rocket is under-appreciated.

Henri showed up as a rookie on the Habs in 1955-56 and it would take until his 6th season with the team before he felt what it was like to NOT win the Stanley Cup. Many players can go over a decade without winning at all and Richard got his name on the Stanley Cup in each of his first five seasons.

The Habs obviously had a terrific team at the time, but Henri Richard was no benchwarmer. Even in his rookie season, he finished 7th on the team in scoring, behind a handful of future Hall of Famers, with 40 points in 64 games.

With Jean Beliveau firmly entrenched as the team’s number one centre, Richard worked his way up to a second line role and was quickly a go-to player offensively. By his third season, he was second on the team in scoring 80 points in 67 games. However, he went four whole years without getting name on the Cup. It must have seemed like an eternity for Henri.

Finally, in 1965, Richard’s seven playoff goals helped lead the Habs to another Stanley Cup. They won again the following year, and might have closed the decade with five straight once again if not for the Toronto Maple Leafs winning one in 1967. Otherwise it was all Habs, with Richard seeing his name etched on the Cup in 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969, giving him a total of nine.

Henri Richard won an unprecedented 10th Stanley Cup in 1971 and would once again be on the championship winning team in 1973 to give him a grand total of 11 Stanley Cup wins as a player. The only players to come close were several of his teammates. Beliveau won 10 as a player, Claude Provost won nine and Yvan Cournoyer, Jacques Lemaire and The Rocket won eight. All of them were teammates of Henri at one point.

With 31 teams in the league today, it’s rare you see the same team win twice in a row. The Penguins did it in 2016 and 2017 but they were the first team to win back to back Cups since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997 and 1998.

A number of Chicago Blackhawks players recently won three Stanley Cups in six years and they were considered a modern dynasty. Chris Kunitz won a Cup with the Anaheim Ducks before winning three with the Pittsburgh Penguins. He had the most by an active player until he retired. He would have needed to triple his number of titles to break Henri Richard’s record.