One season in the NHL in which a hockey player scores 40 or more goals is routine for a player like Alexander Ovechkin. This mark has been surpassed 623 times in the history of the overseas elite league. This was not uncommon, especially during the 1970s and 1980s.
The 2019-20 season saw five players crack the 40-goal mark in the NHL regular season, even though the season was interrupted by a coronavirus outbreak. Last season, when teams played only 56 games, Auston Matthews was even able to reach that milestone.
Once in a while, however, somebody shows up to score more than forty goals in a single season, and then you never hear about them again in that context. Some manage to do it early in their careers, and others find the right chemistry with their teammates and manage to double their usual number of goals. In the chapters below, you will find the 20 most surprising 40-goal scorers in NHL history.
The Canadian center Guy Chouinard scored 17 goals in his first full NHL season with the Atlanta Flames. In his second season, he added eleven more, which wasn’t bad, but what he did in 1978-79 no one expected – scored 50 goals. That performance put him on par with the biggest stars in the league at the time – Bryan Trottier, Marcel Dionne and Guy Lafleur. Assisting his teammates on another 57 goals, it was the first and last time in his career he scored more than 100 points in the regular season.
In each of the next two years, he scored 31 goals; after that, his productivity went downhill. In 1984, at the age of 28, He retired from the NHL. He will be the club’s last goalscorer in history’s annals, though, forever, before moving on to Calgary.