The Boss - A Retrospective

Sunday December 16, 2007 @ 08:47 PM EST

Mike Bossy—what a class act, and what incredible foresight he had to retire early before his numbers significantly dropped.

I was watching a TV piece on him one day and the one question I liked was, “Which goaltender gave you the most trouble?” – the ever humble Bossy’s response? “Well, I averaged 57 goals a year, so none of them.”

Niiice!!

His last season, he scored 38 goals (and added 37 assists, but who cares? It’s Mike Bossy). He only played 63 games that year, his fewest in any season, and called it quits right there. Why? Well, that was the first time (and last) he didn’t score 50 goals in an NHL season.

That’s right, in his first 9 seasons, Bossy scored more than 50 goals in every single one (and over 60 in 5 of them), and led the league twice. Had he retired at the end of season 9, he would’ve averaged 59.4 goals/season, and 0.776 goals/game (instead of the already jaw-dropping .762 for his career – still the NHL record, thanks to Lemieux coming back for 7 goals in 26 games last season, which dropped him to .752).

But, you know, his numbers are still pretty good. He also finished with a career average of 1.497 points per game, the highest for anyone not named Gretzky or Lemieux. I still marvel at Bossy’s 573 goals in 752 games… that’s 0.76 goals per game. He just edges out Mario Lemieux at 0.75 goals per game.

Those two are far and away ahead of all goal scorers in per game production. Near as I can figure, Gretzky is the only other one over 0.60 gpg. In fact on the list of the top 50 all time scorers, there are only 13 players in the whole history of NHL hockey who averaged more than half a goal per game…some legends are obvious: Bobby and Brett Hull, Phil Esposito and Maurice Richard. There is one that might surprise a few NHL casual fans: Eric Lindros.

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