for my
4th Centreman, Team Toe Blake is happy to select Phantom
Joe Malone
I'm shocked he's still availalbe. His 7 goals in a game is still the NHL standard. As is his 2.2 goals per game in a season when he tallied 44 in 20 games. Yeah, it was a different game back then, but the guy definitely had skill.
Malone broke in at the age of nineteen for the
Quebec Bulldogs of the
Eastern Canada Hockey Association in the 1909 season, scoring eight goals in twelve games. The next season the NHA formed, but Quebec was left out of the loop, so he played for Waterloo in the
Ontario Professional Hockey League. Rejoining Quebec in 1911, he was named the team captain and so served for the Bulldogs' seven NHA seasons. Centering linemates such as
Eddie Oatman and
Tommy Marks, he led the Bulldogs to the
Stanley Cups in 1912 and 1913 -- rampaging for a career best nine goals in a Cup match against Sydney -- while recording remarkable scoring marks of 43 goals in twenty games in 1913. His brother
Jeff Malone was also played for Quebec in 1913 when they won the Stanley Cup. In 1917 Joe score 41 goals in 19 games in 1917 for Quebec.
When the NHL was founded in
1917, Quebec did not operate a team its first season and the teams players were dispersed amongst the other teams. Malone was claimed by the
Montreal Canadiens. Playing on what was one of the most powerful forward lines of all time with
Newsy Lalonde and
Didier Pitre, Malone shifted to left wing to accommodate the great Lalonde, and was the NHL's first scoring leader, registering 44 goals in twenty games, a record total that would stand as the NHL's single season goal scoring mark until
1945 and a record per-game average that stands to this day. (If such an average was sustained over today's 82-game schedule, it would result in 180 goals, nearly double
Wayne Gretzky's record of 92.) Malone scored at least one goal (and a total of 35 goals) in his first 14 NHL games to set the record for the longest goal-scoring streak to begin an NHL career.
[1] This streak still stands as the second-longest goal-scoring streak in NHL history.
The season following Malone suffered an injured arm and missed most of the regular season, although he scored six goals in five games in the league final series against the
Ottawa Senators; the lingering injury held him out of the ill-fated Cup finals against the
Seattle Metropolitans.
Quebec revived its franchise in
1919 and Malone rejoined his club, once more leading the league in scoring with 39 goals, and setting a single game goal-scoring mark which still stands of seven against
Toronto on January 31, 1920. However, the team was very weak on the ice -- its goaltender had the poorest goals against average the NHL would ever see (7.13 GAA)-- and recorded a 4-20 record on the season.
The team was relocated to
Hamilton for the
1921 season. Despite missing the first four games of the season as well as the franchise's continued poor performance, Malone still finished fourth in league scoring with 28 goals. He finished fourth in scoring the following season as well.
After trading Lalonde the Canadiens traded for Malone in
1923, but at age 33 his skills vanished, and he scored only a single goal that season while generally playing as a substitute. He played nine games without scoring the next season, playing his last game on January 23 against his former mates in Hamilton, before retiring. The Canadiens did not include his name on the Cup in 1924, because he did not play in the playoffs. However, he is credited by the NHL as winning his 3rd Stanley Cup that season.
He finished his career with 343 goals and 32 recorded assists over fifteen professional seasons.
Malone was elected to the
Hockey Hall of Fame in 1950, and is also a member of the
Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.
[2]
He died of a heart attack May 15, 1969 in Montreal, Quebec.
In 1998, he was ranked number 39 on
The Hockey News' list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players. The list was announced 74 years after his last game and 91 years after his professional debut, making him the earliest player on the list.
[3]
