#87 - Bill Cowley

Bill Cowley (Murillo Pyramid Rank = #87)

Adjusted Stats

1934-1935   Stl         70 GP   10 goals   15 assists   25 points     0.36 PPG
1935-1936   Bos       82 GP   27 goals   24 assists   51 points     0.62 PPG
1936-1937   Bos       79 GP   28 goals   47 assists   75 points     0.95 PPG
1937-1938   Bos       82 GP   35 goals   46 assists   81 points     0.99 PPG
1938-1939   Bos*     58 GP   17 goals   70 assists   87 points     1.50 PPG
1939-1940   Bos       82 GP   27 goals   57 assists   84 points     1.03 PPG
1940-1941   Bos*     79 GP   33 goals   88 assists   122 points   1.55 PPG
1941-1942   Bos       48 GP   7 goals     39 assists   46 points     0.95 PPG
1942-1943   Bos       79 GP   38 goals   63 assists   101 points   1.28 PPG
1943-1944   Bos       59 GP   37 goals   51 assists   88 points     1.48 PPG
1944-1945   Bos       80 GP   34 goals   55 assists   89 points     1.11 PPG
1945-1946   Bos       43 GP   18 goals   18 assists   36 points     0.85 PPG
1946-1947   Bos       70 GP   17 goals   33 assists   51 points     0.73 PPG

Adjusted Playoff Stats

1935-1936   Bos        2 GP     2 goals     1 assist      3 points      1.66 PPG
1936-1937   Bos        3 GP     0 goals     5 assists     5 points      1.51 PPG
1937-1938   Bos        3 GP     3 goals     0 assists     3 points      0.84 PPG
1938-1939   Bos*      12 GP   4 goals     15 assists   19 points    1.62 PPG
1939-1940   Bos        6 GP     0 goals     1 assist       1 point       0.22 PPG
1940-1941   Bos*      2 GP     0 goals     0 assists     0 points      0.00 PPG
1941-1942   Bos        5 GP     0 goals     3 assists     3 points      0.64 PPG
1942-1943   Bos        9 GP     1 goal       6 assists     7 points     0.81 PPG
1944-1945   Bos        7 GP     3 goals     3 assists     7 points      0.98 PPG
1945-1946   Bos        10 GP   1 goal       3 assists     3 points     0.35 PPG
1946-1947   Bos        5 GP     0 goals     2 assists     2 points     0.43 PPG

Career - 911 GP, 328 goals, 606 assists, 936 points, 1.03 PPG
Career-Highs - 38 goals (42-43); 88 assists (40-41); 122 points (40-41); 1.55 PPG (40-41)
Avg. (13 seasons) - 70 GP, 25 goals, 47 assists, 72 points, 1.03 PPG
Peak Avg. (37-45) - 71 GP, 29 goals, 59 assists, 87 points, 1.23 PPG, 2 Cups

Playoff Career - 64 GP, 14 goals, 39 assists, 53 points, 0.83 PPG
Playoff-Highs - 4 goals (38-39); 15 assists (38-39); 19 points (38-39); 1.66 PPG (35-36)

Accolades - 2 MVP Awards
All-Star Teams - 4-time 1st-team, 1-time 2nd-team
2-time Stanley Cup Champion

Like the other Bill (Bill Cook) who checks in a couple of spots ahead of him, Bill Cowley is another unearthed gem of a forgotten era. Milt Schmidt is well known in hockey circles today (perhaps because he's still alive and looking strong at ninety-five!), but it's arguable that Schmidt wasn't even the best center on his own team. Throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s, it was Bill Cowley who was making year-end all-star teams and winning MVP awards.

So why isn't Cowley better known? Part of it may be the fact that Cowley's best years came during the middle of World War II. Rightly or wrongly, there is a stigma attached to the NHL stars of that era...since many of the best hockey players in the world were fighting oversees, the theory goes that the stars of the early 1940s were playing in a watered-down league.

I'm not sure I completely buy into that theory...hard as it is to believe today, critics lobbied the same accusations at Maurice Richard (who, by the way, continued to tear up the league when the war was over). And there's a flipside to the argument: Cowley saw his team ravaged as the Bruins' best players were called upon to serve oversees. He proceeded to set record after record for assists, and when he retired he was the NHL's career points leader.

Cowley had some seasons of Joe Thornton/Adam Oates-like production...unfortunately, his numbers were a little hurt by various injuries that derailed different seasons. In 1943-1944, he was averaging 1.48 adjusted PPG and seemed destined to break the record for points in a season, but he missed a good chunk of games due to injury and ended up two points short.

Even though his legacy hasn't endured to quite the degree of some of his contemporaries, Cowley's accomplishments during his peak are still worthy of recognition. He won two MVP awards (making him one of the least-known multiple MVP-award winners to today's generation of hockey fans), two Stanley Cup rings and was integral to the first one in 1939, scoring a whopping 19 adjusted points in 12 games. And perhaps most impressively, Cowley put up remarkable assist totals in an era when assists were far harder to come by. Cowley earns a place on my Pyramid for dominating his era, even if that era may have been overshadowed by a world at war.