#92 - Toe Blake

Toe Blake (Murillo Pyramid Rank = #92)

Adjusted Stats

1934-1935   Mtl (M)*14 GP   0 goals     0 assists     0 points       0.00 PPG
1935-1936   Mtl         19 GP   2 goals     5 assists     7 points       0.39 PPG
1936-1937   Mtl         73 GP   21 goals   26 assists   47 points     0.64 PPG
1937-1938   Mtl         73 GP   35 goals   33 assists   69 points     0.93 PPG
1938-1939   Mtl         82 GP   50 goals   48 assists   97 points     1.19 PPG
1939-1940   Mtl         82 GP   36 goals   40 assists   76 points     0.92 PPG
1940-1941   Mtl         82 GP   24 goals   39 assists   63 points     0.76 PPG
1941-1942   Mtl         82 GP   29 goals   42 assists   71 points     0.86 PPG
1942-1943   Mtl         79 GP   32 goals   50 assists   82 points     1.05 PPG
1943-1944   Mtl*       67 GP   32 goals   41 assists   73 points     1.08 PPG
1944-1945   Mtl         80 GP   40 goals   52 assists   92 points     1.14 PPG
1945-1946   Mtl*       82 GP   44 goals   32 assists   75 points     0.92 PPG
1946-1947   Mtl         82 GP   28 goals   39 assists   66 points     0.81 PPG
1947-1948   Mtl         44 GP   13 goals   22 assists   34 points     0.79 PPG

Adjusted Playoff Stats

1934-1935   Mtl (M)* 1 GP     0 goals     0 assists     0 points      0.00 PPG
1936-1937   Mtl          5 GP     2 goals     0 assists     2 points      0.30 PPG
1937-1938   Mtl          3 GP     4 goals     1 assists     5 points      1.69 PPG
1938-1939   Mtl          3 GP     1 goal       1 assist      3 points      0.93 PPG
1940-1941   Mtl          3 GP     0 goals     4 assists     4 points      1.27 PPG
1941-1942   Mtl          3 GP     0 goals     3 assists     3 points      1.06 PPG
1942-1943   Mtl          5 GP     4 goals     3 assists     6 points      1.27 PPG
1943-1944   Mtl*        9 GP     7 goals     11 assists   18 points    2.02 PPG
1944-1945   Mtl          6 GP     0 goals     2 assists     2 points      0.38 PPG
1945-1946   Mtl*        9 GP     6 goals     5 assists     11 points    1.25 PPG
1946-1947   Mtl          11 GP   2 goals     7 assists     10 points    0.88 PPG

Career - 941 GP, 386 goals, 469 assists, 852 points, 0.91 PPG
Career-Highs - 50 goals (38-39); 52 assists (44-45); 97 points (38-39); 1.19 PPG (38-39)
Avg. (13 seasons) - 71 GP, 30 goals, 36 assists, 66 points, 0.91 PPG
Peak Avg. (38-46) - 80 GP, 36 goals, 43 assists, 79 points, 0.99 PPG, 2 Cups

Playoff Career - 58 GP, 26 goals, 37 assists, 64 points, 1.10 PPG
Playoff-Highs - 7 goals (43-44); 11 assists (43-44); 18 points (43-44); 2.02 PPG (43-44)

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

Mention Toe Blake to your average hockey fan today and they'll think about one of the most successful coaches to ever be behind an NHL bench. And with good reason: he has a career winning percentage of .634 and was the coach of eight Stanley Cup champions, bested only by Scotty Bowman. Pretty damn impressive. But what many forget is that Toe Blake was one of the best players, and certainly one of the best left-wingers, of his era. That places him with Jacques Lemaire as one of the few people in hockey history with hall-of-fame credentials as both a player and a coach.

Blake was the Canadiens' star player before Maurice Richard burst onto the scene. In 1938-1939, he won the Hart trophy with adjusted numbers of 50 goals and 97 points, good for the scoring title as well. Throughout the 1940s, Blake would crack the top ten in scoring five more times and earn first or second-team all-star recognition five times in total for his career.

His run from 1938 to 1946 is pretty much elite-level for a left-winger...the only reason I have Blake this low on the Pyramid is that he was playing in a somewhat inferior era. Like Bill Cowley, his legacy suffers because Blake's best years came when the league was watered-down due to elite players serving in the war. Nevertheless, Blake put up some of the best postseason numbers of any left-winger in the Original Six era, averaging over a point a game. In 1944, while Richard was grabbing the headlines for his 50-in-50 performance, Blake put forward an incredible postseason, scoring 7 goals and 18 points in just 9 playoff games as the Canadiens won the Cup. Had the Conn Smythe trophy existed, it's fair to say Blake would have taken it home. He followed that effort up in 1946 by leading the playoffs in goal scoring and putting up 11 points in 9 games for another Cup victory.

Blake retired in 1947 as one of the best left-wingers of the 1940s. Eight years later, he was behind the Habs' bench, where he began a remarkable run of success, winning five championships in his first five seasons as coach. It's one of the rare examples of an elite player being able to translate his skills to coaching. One of the most clutch players of the 1940s soon became the face of brilliant coaching in the 1950s. It would be as if Luc Robitaille retired, and then a few years later had reinvented himself as the second coming of Scotty Bowman. In a way, Blake may have been his own worst enemy: he was such a good coach, he ended up overshadowing his accomplishments as a player.