#30 - Howie Morenz

Howie Morenz (Murillo Pyramid Rank = #30)

Adjusted Stats

1923-1924  Mtl*        82 GP   51 goals   12 assists    63 points     0.77 PPG
1924-1925  Mtl          82 GP   94 goals   37 assists    131 points   1.60 PPG
1925-1926  Mtl          71 GP   70 goals   9 assists      79 points     1.12 PPG
1926-1927  Mtl          82 GP   72 goals   20 assists    92 points     1.12 PPG
1927-1928  Mtl          80 GP   100 goals 54 assists    154 points   1.92 PPG
1928-1929  Mtl          78 GP   67 goals   39 assists    106 points   1.35 PPG
1929-1930  Mtl*        82 GP   78 goals   19 assists    97 points     1.18 PPG
1930-1931  Mtl*        73 GP   67 goals   55 assists    122 points   1.68 PPG
1931-1932  Mtl          82 GP   51 goals   53 assists    103 points   1.26 PPG
1932-1933  Mtl          79 GP   32 goals   48 assists    81 points     1.03 PPG
1933-1934  Mtl          67 GP   17 goals   28 assists    46 points     0.69 PPG
1934-1935  Chi          82 GP   17 goals   54 assists    71 points     0.87 PPG
1935-1936  Chi/NYR 72 GP   15 goals   36 assists    51 points     0.71 PPG
1936-1937  Mtl          51 GP    9 goals    34 assists    43 points     0.83 PPG

Adjusted Playoff Stats

1923-1924   Mtl*       2 GP      2 goals     1 assist       3 points       1.61 PPG
1924-1925   Mtl         2 GP      2 goals     0 assists      2 points       1.20 PPG
1926-1927   Mtl         4 GP      2 goals     0 assists      2 points       0.44 PPG
1927-1928   Mtl         2 GP      0 goals     0 assists      0 points       0.00 PPG
1928-1929   Mtl         3 GP      0 goals     0 assists      0 points       0.00 PPG
1929-1930   Mtl*       6 GP      4 goals     0 assists      4 points       0.75 PPG
1930-1931   Mtl*       10 GP    1 goal       6 assists      7 points       0.70 PPG
1931-1932   Mtl         4 GP      1 goal       0 assists      1 point        0.26 PPG
1932-1933   Mtl         2 GP      0 goals      4 assists      4 points      2.07 PPG
1933-1934   Mtl         2 GP      1 goal       1 assist        3 points      1.48 PPG
1934-1935   Chi         2 GP      0 goals     0 assists       0 points      0.00 PPG

Career - 1063 GP, 740 goals, 498 assists, 1239 points, 1.17 PPG
Career-Highs - 100 goals (27-28); 55 assists (30-31); 154 points (27-28); 1.92 PPG (27-28)
Avg. (14 seasons) - 76 GP, 53 goals, 36 assists, 89 points, 1.17 PPG
Peak Avg. (24-32) - 79 GP, 75 goals, 36 assists, 111 points, 1.40 PPG, 2 Cups

Playoff Career - 39 GP, 13 goals, 12 assists, 26 points, 0.67 PPG
Playoff-Highs - 4 goals (29-30); 6 assists (30-31); 7 points (30-31); 2.07 PPG (32-33)

Accolades - 3 MVP awards
All-Star Teams - 2-time 1st-team, 1-time 2nd-team
3-time Stanley Cup Champion

Well, here we are: the first truly tough-to-gauge player on the Pyramid. I find it fitting to close out Level 5 with the first and only representative of the pre-WWII era. Howie Morenz and Eddie Shore were the NHL's first two true superstars. But how can we possibly determine where they fit in the history of the greats? I'll deal with this conundrum here, because I believe Morenz was the best player of his era, but there will be a few more entries on the Pyramid (Shore, Cook, Conacher, Busher Jackson) that will bring up the same problems.

In order to have seen Morenz play, at the peak of his career, and understand what you were seeing, you would have to be at least 95 right now. And that would have made you twelve when Morenz was scoring 100 adjusted goals, in 1927-1928.

So you're 95. You were 28, possibly married, most likely serving overseas in a little spat known as World War II, when Maurice Richard scored 50 in 50. You were in your late thirties, probably well into having your own family, working hard to pay off the mortgage and raise your children, when Gordie Howe was tearing up the league. When Bobby Orr redefined the role of a defenceman, you were already 55, perhaps with a few young grandchildren already. When Gretzky was at his best you were 65, still sharp no doubt, but already letting nostalgia for your youth perhaps cloud your judgment. Are you a 100% trustworthy eyewitness to who was, in fact, the most dominant player you ever saw?

That's the negative viewpoint towards the old-timers, and I must admit at times an urge to take the proclamations of nostalgic grampas with a grain of salt. But let's look at it another way, a generational way: we all saw Mario Lemieux. Lemieux idolized Lafleur. Lafleur idolized Beliveau. Beliveau idolized Richard. Richard idolized Morenz. Or let's make it more personal. If you, right now, are anywhere between 30 to 45, maybe even younger, think of your grandfather, if you were lucky enough to know him. Pretty cool guy probably, right? Didn't seem like some relic of an unknown time (except for the unfortunate views on Asians...or was that just my grandfather?). Well, he would have been chasing some university tail right around the time Howie Morenz was ripping it up (in the case of my grandfather, he was still chasing university tail when Jaromir Jagr was ripping it up. Even Asian girls). All of a sudden, Morenz and his contemporaries don't seem too far removed.

Look, as I've already explained in the introduction to the Pyramid, there is no doubt that all athletes evolve as generations go by. If you built a time machine and brought the past stars to today's era, they'd be massacred. Simmons makes the case in his book of basketball, I'd make the case for hockey, and it's true for pretty much every other sport out there. The one sport that is somewhat immune to inquisitive questioning of past numbers is baseball. Sure, the athletes have evolved. And oh yeah, before 1947, there was the ticklish matter that no black players were allowed to play in the major leagues. But for the most part, hitting a baseball was hitting a baseball, and pitching one quickly, and with movement, was essentially the same. So there may be a few statistical anomalies (the dead-ball era, the high-scoring early 1930s and low-scoring 1960s, the Steroid Era of the 90s and early 2000s), but for the most part, we can compare eras without entering into silly season as you risk doing with other sports.

Just as rating NBA players before the 24-shot-clock era is difficult (and some might say pointless), it's hard to figure out where Morenz, Shore and their ilk rank. They played in a time not terribly removed from the Original Six days of the 40s, 50s and 60s (there were actually more teams at that time...it was the pre-Original Six, if you will), but still there were some important differences. Forward passes were illegal for the first years of Morenz' career. It was a lot harder to get credit for an assist than it is now (which explains the ridiculous goal/assist ratio of the stars). And of course, the league was in its infancy...it was hard to know what a great hockey player was, or even a great skater (clearly balance is a no-brainer, but fluidity is a newer trait that's looked for), because the concepts were somewhat new to everyone.

So now that that's out of the way (and hopefully I won't have to reiterate this when I get to the other pre-WWII players), we can get to actually looking at Morenz. The man was, for his time, a scoring machine: his peak numbers, when adjusted, are in the Gretzky/Lemieux/Orr area, and he has the most adjusted goals over an 8-year peak of anyone in history. There is also the hard to ignore 100 adjusted goals in 1927-1928.

Clearly these numbers don't quite have the same impact of, say, Esposito's adjusted numbers in the 1970s, or of course Gretzky's in the 1980s. Some of it stems from the fact that Morenz played in an era when scoring was at an extremely low pace, so when adjusted to a common average, they shoot up like a heroine junkie. There's also the fact that Morenz played during regular seasons that were 30-35 games long, not 82.

And there's more. In the 1920s, teams had their stars, and that was that. If you were your team's go-to scorer, you were out on the ice most of the time. In 27-28 (Morenz' 100-goal season), his actual total was 33. Aurele Joliat had 28, Art Gagne had 20...after that, the next closest was 8. So Morenz scored 28.4% of his team's goals. In Gretzky's 92 1981-1982 campaign, he scored 22.0% of his team's goals, but that was with a team that rolled three and occasionally four forward lines.

So that's the context for Morenz' insane goal-scoring numbers during his peak years. But even with all of those disclaimers, Morenz still has to be considered a Level 5 guy, because he dominated the era he was lucky (or unlucky) enough to come into. There is also the intangible, the legend of Morenz, the fact that his demise is the hockey equivalent of Lou Gehrig's in its combination of tragedy and poetry. In 1937, Morenz was involved in a collision that sent him crashing into the boards, breaking his leg. He spent a month in the hospital (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Morenzhospital1937.jpg) and was told he probably wouldn't be able to play hockey again. The fastest skater the game had seen to that point, the record-holder for most career points, a man whose exciting style helped grow hockey in the United States, was robbed of the thing he loved to do. Toward the end of his stay in the hospital, doctors realized that Morenz had suffered a nervous breakdown. He complained of chest pains, and on his way to the hospital bathroom, collapsed, dead, at 34 years old. It was a heart attack, but to quote The Hockey News, "those who knew him best said Morenz died of a broken heart".

A guy with three Stanley Cup rings, 740 adjusted career goals, a reputation as the best player of his era (the only competition being Shore), 3 MVP awards, and a passion for hockey so great that he left this world when he found out he couldn't play it anymore? I don't care if his peak came before they had invented "talkies", that guy has earned a right to be on Level 5 of my pyramid as one of the true greats the game has seen.