Bobby Orr
Maurice Richard
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Maurice Richard leads 2 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Bobby Orr at #2 and Maurice Richard at #6.
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The case for Bobby Orr
Bobby Orr redefined what a defenceman could be, and many who saw both call him the most purely dominant player ever. Before Orr, blueliners defended; he attacked, rushing the puck end to end and quarterbacking the offence with unprecedented speed and vision. He remains the only defenceman to win the Art Ross as scoring champion, doing it twice, and his plus-124 in 1970-71 is a record that will never fall. Orr won eight consecutive Norris Trophies as the league's best defenceman, three straight Hart Trophies as MVP, and two Stanley Cups with the Boston Bruins, the first sealed by his airborne, flying goal in overtime of the 1970 Final, hockey's most famous photograph. Chronic knee injuries wrecked his body and forced retirement at 30 after just 12 seasons, leaving fans to wonder what fuller health might have yielded. Even truncated, his peak, a stretch of the early 1970s when he led the entire league in scoring from the back end, stands as arguably the highest any player has reached.
The case for Maurice Richard
The Rocket was hockey's first great goal-scoring folk hero and the fiery soul of the Montreal Canadiens. In 1944-45 Maurice Richard became the first player to score 50 goals in 50 games, a benchmark that stood as the sport's ultimate scoring feat for decades, and in 1957 he became the first to reach 500 career goals. He won eight Stanley Cups, including a record five in a row from 1956 to 1960, and led the Canadiens with a competitive fury that made him a cultural icon in Quebec. His 1955 suspension by the league president sparked the Richard Riot in Montreal, an event now seen as a flashpoint of French-Canadian identity. Richard finished with 544 goals and 966 points in a low-scoring era, and, remarkably, never won a Hart Trophy despite his dominance. From the blue line in he was terrifying, his eyes reportedly blazing as he bore down on goaltenders. The NHL's trophy for its leading goal-scorer bears his name.