Montreal Canadiens: This Day In Habs History: The Rocket Scores Number 500

Montreal Canadiens superstar Maurice “Rocket” Richard was the league’s first elite goal scorer.

The Montreal Canadiens have had many great players in their history. You could argue that some have been better, but none have been more iconic in the history of the league’s most historic franchise than Maurice “The Rocket” Richard.

Richard was by far the league’s best goal scoring threat when he reached his peak with the Canadiens. He scored 250 goals in the 1940’s when no one else even reached 200. He was the first player to score 50 in a season, a feat that seemed unthinkable at the time.

In 1943-44, Doug Bentley of the Chicago Blackhawks led the NHL in goals with 38. Since Joe Malone scored 44 back in 1918, only once had a player reached 40 again and that was Coonie Weiland in 1929-30. So, when The Rocket sniped 50 in 1944-45, no one had even scored 40 in 15 years. No one would reach 50 again until Boom Boom Geoffrion did it 15 years later, in the season after Rocket retired.

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It was just Richard’s third year in the league and his second full season after he broke his leg in his rookie season. He scored 32 in his first full season, which put him 6th in the league in goals, and then his the magical mark of 50, which was 18 more than the next best goal scorer that season.

Richard didn’t score 50 again, though he didn’t exactly slow down either. He would go on to score 544 goals in 978 games – all with the Montreal Canadiens. 544 goals is still the most ever scored by someone in a Canadiens sweater and it will remain the record for a very long time. The leader among active Habs players is Brendan Gallagher who has 173 career goals.

While Rocket was the first player to ever score 50 in a season, he was also the first player to reach 500 in his NHL career. He scored that famous goal on this date, October 19, in 1957.

This was the first season that a player was allowed out of the penalty box after his team allows a goal. Before then, power plays lasted two minutes, no matter how many goals were scored. This rule was changed in 1956, mostly because the Canadiens had Rocket Richard on the ice with Jean Beliveau, Boom Boom Geoffrion, Doug Harvey and Dickie Moore and it was simply unfair for the Habs to score three times because one of their players was tripped in the neutral zone.

Still, as you can see in the video above that resulted in Richard’s 500th career goal, the Habs power play was doing damage. It was just limited to a maximum on one goal per opportunity.

This was The Rocket’s 863rd game and he remained the only player to score 500 until Gordie Howe joined him five years later, though it took Mr. Howe 1045 games to reach the mark.

Rocket remained the fastest to reach 500 until Phil Esposito scored his 500th in game number 803 in 1974. Not bad considering Richard played nearly half his games at that time against Terry Sawchuk and Glenn Hall. There were only six teams in the league during Richard’s career. Though Jacques Plante was terrific in goal for the Canadiens, Richard was facing one of the top six goaltenders on the planet every night.

Rocket Richard is the most iconic player in the history of the Montreal Canadiens. He put an exclamation point on that status 63 years ago today when he entered the record books as the first player to ever score 500 goals in the National Hockey League.