Caufield’s 50th goal put him in exclusive club with Canadiens legends 

The anticipation had been growing for many weeks, Montreal Canadiens fans warming to the possibility with each goal scored by Cole Caufield.

With explosive speed, a heartbeat-quick release, soft hands and great enthusiasm, Caufield has been the flashiest, most entertaining goal-scorer in this city since the late, legendary Guy Lafleur.

On Thursday at Bell Centre, during a playoff-intense 2-1 win against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the 25-year-old joined an elite club of six Canadiens who 12 times since 1944-45 scored at least 50 goals in a season, the 102nd NHL player of all time to reach that plateau. His 50th came a week to the night after he’d scored Nos. 48 and 49 against the Rangers in New York.

It’s been 36 years since Stephane Richer scored 50, then 51, in 1989-1990, the most recent Canadiens player with 50 reaching that mark more than a decade before Caufield was born.

Surrounded by his teammates, Cole Caufield holds his 50th goal puck in the Canadiens dressing room Thursday night after reaching the milestone against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Bell Centre was instantly an open-air arena Thursday when fans raised the roof in celebration of Caufield’s goal, a 24-foot snap shot past Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy at 6:30 of the second period. 

Caufield had flirted with history the past three games -- on the road and at home against the New Jersey Devils last weekend, then at home Tuesday against the Florida Panthers. Fourteen shots between Nos. 49 and 50 seemed an eternity for Canadiens fans, who erupted when Caufield finally buried a pass from captain Nick Suzuki past Vasilevskiy on his fifth and what would be his final shot of the night.

His Thursday milestone came on the 80th anniversary of the Canadiens’ sixth Stanley Cup championship, a 6-3 Game 5 Montreal Forum win against the Boston Bruins clinching the 1946 title.

The portraits of four of the Canadiens’ 50-goal men are displayed in the team’s dressing room, honored as Hockey Hall of Fame members: Maurice “Rocket” Richard, in 1944-45 the first in NHL history to hit the half-century milestone; Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion, in 1960-61; Lafleur, who scored 50 or more in six consecutive seasons from 1974-75 through 1979-80; and Steve Shutt, in 1976-77.

Pierre Larouche (1979-80) and Richer (1987-88 and 1999-2000) round out the club.

Montreal Canadiens’ Maurice “Rocket” Richard on Oct. 29, 1952 with his 324th regular-season goal puck, tying him with Nels Stewart for the NHL’s all-time lead before he went on to score 544 for his career; and Canadiens’ Cole Caufield with his 40th goal puck, scored on March 17, 2026. Caufield was the first on his team with 40 since Vincent Damphousse in 1993-94.

Another portrait in the room is that of Yvan Cournoyer, the 10-time Stanley Cup champion and today the team’s most storied ambassador, 43 goals in 1968-69 his career high.

Nicknamed “Roadrunner” for his blistering speed, Cournoyer’s retired number banner and those of Richard, Geoffrion and Lafleur hang in arena rafters. Captain of the Canadiens from 1976-79, winning the Stanley Cup all four seasons, he was in attendance Thursday when Caufield brought the house down.

Similarities are reasonably drawn between Cournoyer, who played with 178 pounds on his 5-foot-7 frame, and the swift Caufield (5-8, 175).

The two met outside the Canadiens’ Bell Centre alumni lounge in April 2022, near the end of Caufield’s rookie season, the team recording the chat for their website as Cournoyer explained to a star-struck young player, and his father, Paul, what it means to represent the Canadiens on and off the ice.

Paul Caufield emotionally witnessed his son’s historic goal on Thursday as did a cheering Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister wearing a Canadiens cap.

Heading into the schedule’s final week, Caufield and Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche are locked in a spirited race for the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy, since 1999 awarded annually to the NHL’s top goal-scorer during the regular season.  

No Canadiens player has ever won the trophy named for the greatest scorer in franchise history, Milan Hejduk (50 goals in 2002-03) the only Avalanche winner.
 
With four games to play, MacKinnon has 52 goals, two more than Caufield with three on the latter’s schedule. Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid, the 2023 Richard Trophy winner, stands third with 47 goals and three to play.

A trophy presented to Maurice “Rocket” Richard in 1949, made by a Montreal jeweller, to commemorate his 45th and 50th goals of the 1944-45 season and his 200th regular season goal, scored Jan. 15, 1949 against the Chicago Black Hawks; and the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy, since 1999 awarded to the NHL’s top goal-scorer during the regular season.

The Richard Trophy race could go down to the final game of the season, Colorado home to the Seattle Kraken on April 14 (10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN, ALT, SNE, TVAS), the Canadiens finishing up two nights earlier in Philadelphia against the Flyers (7 p.m. ET, NBCSP, TSN2, RDS).

For all of Lafleur’s exploits over six straight seasons, Geoffrion becoming the second in NHL history after Richard with 50 and the sniping of Shutt, Larouche and Richer, it’s the Rocket who historically blazed a trail in 1944-45 season for all in the NHL to follow.

The eras can be compared only in terms of rink and net size and the six-ounce puck, but statistics show this:

Caufield scored his 50 against 22 of 31 NHL opponents and 26 different goalies, 12 of his goals game-winners, five coming in overtime and 10 on the power play. Richard scored his 50 against seven goalies on all five opponents of his day, with seven game-winners and 11 on the power play.

Maurice Richard and Boston Bruins goalie Harvey Bennett Sr. in 1944-45 portraits, and a newspaper clipping reporting on Richard’s 50th goal of that season.

It seems remarkable today that the Rocket’s 50th was scored almost invisibly on March 18, 1945, in the Canadiens’ 50th and final game of the regular season. With only 2:15 left on the third-period clock at Boston Garden, Richard converted a pass from center Elmer Lach, beating Bruins goalie Harvey Bennett Sr.

Montreal media hadn’t travelled to Boston for the game, playoff matchups already set, and the local press saw the goal only as a passing reference in the visitors’ 4-2 victory, the Canadiens’ 10th consecutive defeat of the Bruins.

Richard wasn’t quoted in any game story, dressing rooms rarely visited postgame in those days. There had been much more attention paid to his 45th goal a few weeks earlier when he passed Canadiens’ Joe Malone for the single-season scoring record that had been set in 1917-18, the NHL’s 22-game first year.

It seemed to matter little that night in Boston that Richard, in his second full NHL season, had just scored his 87th goal, on his way to 544 during his illustrious career. Caufield’s 50th was his 168th career goal, coming in his fifth full season.

The Canadiens' fearsome Punch Line, with Lach at center, Richard at right wing and Toe Blake at left wing, had made mincemeat of the opposition in 50-game 1944-45, averaging a combined 4.4 points per game. Lach led the League with 80 points (26 goals, 54 assists), Richard was second with 73 points (50 goals, 23 assists) and Blake third with 67 points (29 goals, 38 assists).

Richard was steady throughout the season, never going three straight games without a goal, his season highlighted by an eight-point game (five goals, three assists) on Dec. 28 against the visiting Detroit Red Wings.

He scored his 45th goal on Feb. 25 at home against the Toronto Maple Leafs to set the NHL record, passing Malone’s 44.

The Canadiens’ legendary 1940s Punch Line, with right wing Maurice Richard (l.), center Elmer Lach (c.) and left wing Toe Blake. Lach, Richard and Blake went 1-2-3 in NHL scoring in 1944-45, Richard scoring 50 goals that season.

The Rocket inched closer to 50, the pressure building as he endured the relentless shadow, obstruction and stick work of checkers and the suffocating focus of media and fans. He thought he'd scored his 50th on March 17 in a 4-3 win against the Chicago Black Hawks at the Montreal Forum, but it was disallowed.

The next night in Boston, the Bruins threw a blanket on him and led the Canadiens 2-1 going into the final three minutes of the third period.

Bennett was in goal for the Bruins by then, coach Art Ross having substituted him for Paul Bibeault halfway through the game, and the rookie would be written into history with 2:15 left to play when Richard beat him on a pass from Lach to make it 2-2.

Cole Caufield releases the shot Thursday at Bell Centre that would beat Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy for his 50th goal of the season.

Blake, assisted by Richard, and Lach would score in an 18-second span after that, the Punch Line defeating the Bruins 4-2 with the late surge.

Bennett, just 19, had been called up by the Bruins from the Boston Olympics of the Eastern Hockey League for 25 games. He went 10-12-2 with a 4.20 goals-against average but never returned to the NHL, playing most of the next 14 seasons in the American Hockey League, which posthumously welcomed him to their Hall of Fame in 2013.

Hockey historian Joe Pelletier has written that the goalie's three sons, former NHL players Harvey Benett Jr., Curt Bennett and Bill Bennett, said their father insisted Richard's 50th goal was kicked in.

A decade before his death in 2004, the goalie told The Hockey News, “Elmer Lach gave (Richard) a … lot of help on the play. In fact, Elmer knocked me on my (behind), and when I was down and out, bang, Richard whipped it in the net.”

Cole Caufield (second from left) is congratulated by linemates Juraj Slafkovsky (20) and captain Nick Suzuki, joined by defenseman Lane Hutson, after scoring against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena on Nov. 27, 2024.

Not long before Richard’s death in 2000, the Rocket admitted to author and historian Brian McFarlane, “I just don’t remember how it was scored.”

The Canadiens finished the 1944-45 season atop the NHL standings, 13 points ahead of the second-place Detroit Red Wings, and Richard would score six more goals during the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

But it was another rookie goalie who stunned Montreal in the postseason, the Maple Leafs’ 26-year-old Frank “Ulcers” McCool eliminating them in six games in the first round.

It was a measure of revenge for McCool, whose name had a month earlier been linked to Richard’s for another reason: he was the goaltender on whom the Rocket had scored to break Malone’s record.

For Caufield more than 80 years later, everything in the playoff-bound Canadiens’ final three regular-season games is gravy. There’s virtually no chance that he’ll catch the franchise-record 60 goals shared by Lafleur (1977-78) and Shutt (1976-77), but with 50 he’s already joined an exclusive franchise club, one with lifetime membership.

Top photo: Cole Caufield holds his 50th goal puck in the Montreal Canadiens’ Bell Centre dressing room Thursday after he’d scored against the Tampa Bay Lightning.