Montreal Canadiens have not had a top 10 point leader in nearly 40 years

Mar 11 2022, 7:45 pm

If you remember the most recent Halley’s Comet, you might remember the last time the Montreal Canadiens had a top 10 point leader in the NHL.

Mats Näslund, folks.

The last time the Habs had a top 10 NHL points leader was during the 1985-86 season when ‘Le Petit Viking’ popped in 43 goals and had 67 assists.

His 110-point season was good for eighth that year, nearly half of Wayne Gretzky’s astonishing 215-point campaign.

It’s been nearly four decades since we’ve seen a Canadiens player atop the NHL’s top-shelf talent board.

Hockey Reference

Amidst all the new analytics and advanced stats in today’s sports, it felt like it was time to get back to the bare bones of hockey: goals and assists.

Perhaps there’s an easier way to access decades-worth of information these days but Hockey Reference has a pretty in-depth NHL Skater Statistics site. By going back year by year until a Habs player appeared on the top 10 point leaders, it took 36 seasons to finally find a Canadiens player among the league’s top 10 scorers.

We’ve had our fair share of snipers throughout the past three decades. Max Pacioretty and Alex Kovalev were consistent scorers (Kovalev was 11th in 2007-08 with a 35-49-84 line). Tomáš Plekanec, Saku Koivu, Mike Ribeiro, Yanic Perreault, Pierre Turgeon, Vincent Damphousse, and heck even Martin Ručinský lead the team at separate times but never cracked the league’s top 10.

Are Habs fans going to have to go through another reincarnation of the Winnipeg Jets before we get a good old-fashioned point-getter?

Since a Canadien player made the top 10 scoring list, the NHL lost the other Quebec team, went through the entire Atlanta Thrashers franchise, took away and brought back the Winnipeg Jets, changed the Mighty Ducks to the Anaheim Ducks, swapped Minnesota for Dallas, gave Minnesota another team, expanded into Columbus, Vegas, and (barring a miraculous Tatar point frenzy) Seattle.

max pacioretty

Montreal Canadiens / Twitter

(For the record, a top 10 scoring leader did happen in the province when Joe Sakic finished fourth for the Quebec Nordiques with a 19-43-62 line during the strike-shortened 1994-95 season.)

Understandably, it’s not easy to get goal producers. It’s the most highly sought product in the NHL and they’re not easy to come by. But surely you should be able to run into at least one top 10-scorer over the past three-plus decades, no?

If the Canadiens front office is looking forward and considering ways to bounce back from an abysmal 2021-2022 season, goal scorers might be a smart place to start.

And until then, thanks for representing the bleu, blanc et rouge, Näslund.

Ty JadahTy Jadah

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