Montreal Canadiens: Top Five All Time Centers: #2 Howie Morenz

The Montreal Canadiens have entered the quietest time on the calendar. While there is little to look forward to in the month of August, we decided to take a look back at some of the greatest players in franchise history. We continue up our site countdown of the five best centers in Canadiens history with number two, Howie Morenz.

The Montreal Canadiens have a long line of fantastic players over their history and Howie Morenz was their first. Morenz was reluctant to leave his hometown of Stratford, Ontario and become a pro hockey player, but when he finally decided to join the Canadiens it paid off immediately.

In his rookie season, Morenz scored 13 goals in 24 games and helped the Canadiens win the Stanley Cup for the second time in franchise history. He would quickly form a terrific tandem with winger Aurel Joliat as the pair took the NHL by storm for over a decade, helping lead the Canadiens to two more Stanley Cup titles.

Morenz quickly became known as one of the most dangerous offensive weapons in the league and his rushes up ice with the puck became the stuff of legend. He was seemingly impossible to stop and would wind up in his own zone and carry the puck the length of ice on nearly every shift.

This was a time before forward passing was allowed in the NHL, at least for the first several years of Morenz career, so a puck carrying phenom was as valuable a commodity as there was in the league at that time.

Morenz more than doubled his goal scoring in his second season, putting 27 pucks in the net and followed that up with seasons of 23 and 25 goals before reaching the 30 goal plateau for the first time. He had a total of 33 goals in the 1927-28 season, in just 43 games, and was awarded the Hart Trophy as league MVP for the first time.

He would win the Hart Trophy twice more, in 1931 and 1932, though his best season may have been in 1929-30 when he scored 40 goals in 44 games.

He had 230 goals in 345 games in his first nine seasons in the league which is an average of 0.6667 goals per game or two goals every three games. In that nearly decade span, he scored 45 more goals than anyone else in the league and his 344 points were 75 more than anyone else.

Morenz story ended tragically in 1937. He played his last game for the Canadiens on January 28th of that year and was hit hard into the boards by a Black Hawks player. The collision broke Morenz leg in four places and he would later die in hospital from a coronary embolism.

Morenz played 14 seasons in the NHL and was the best player on the ice for the first decade of his career. Three MVP awards and the being the highest scoring player of his era makes him the second best center to ever play for the Montreal Canadiens.

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