Malone's 7-goal game remains NHL record 106 years later

MONTREAL -- At the time, there was little fuss made of Joe Malone's game for the ages, in fact barely any mention at all, with the NHL midway through its third season of existence.

The Quebec Bulldogs forward seemingly couldn't miss on Jan. 31, 1920, scoring seven times in a 10-6 home-ice victory against the Toronto St. Patricks.

Malone was mentioned only in the fourth paragraph of a wire-service report, just by surname, described by Canadian Press as "the brightest star for the locals, the lanky forward having the biggest night of the year, setting up an individual performance such as has not been equaled this year. He scored seven tallies and played a great game."

The feat of "Phantom Joe," as he was nicknamed for his speed that eluded checkers, sleight of hand and how he'd weave his way through the opposition almost like a ghost, was the greatest single-game goal-scoring effort in the record books of the young NHL.

An undated one-of-a-kind Joe Malone Hockey Hall of Fame card, featuring his cut signature that was added to it.

Today, 106 years later, Malone's seven goals are still atop the League's all-time list, and he remains the only NHL player to twice score at least six in a game. In 126 NHL games, Malone scored at least five goals five times.

Having resisted a lucrative $1,800 offer to join the rival Pacific Coast League, Malone became an elite sniper in the National Hockey Association then took his gifts to the fledgling NHL, making seven-goal history in a frigid, mostly empty arena.

"It was 25 degrees below zero on the night when Joe scored seven times," the Montreal Star's Lloyd McGowan wrote in a May 1963 column. "Toronto employed two goal janitors, Mitchell and Lockhart, in an effort to stop Joe, who shot his last three within two minutes of the third period."

Another report had the unheated Quebec Arena being just slightly warmer than the minus-33 degrees outside, the cold so intense that Toronto's Corbett Denneny left the game early with a badly frozen hand.

Joe Malone as featured in the 2010 book "Official Guide to the Players of the Hockey Hall of Fame," and in a 1920-21 portrait with the NHL Hamilton Tigers.

On Jan. 7, 1920, Malone scored four times to become the NHL's all-time leading goal-scorer, his total of 59 edging him past Cy Denneny of the Ottawa Senators. The two often took turns holding the top spot before Malone earned the outright lead with his historic performance.

Since beating St. Patricks goalie Ivan Mitchell four times in the first two periods and reliever Howard Lockhart for a natural hat trick to close out the scoring in the third, Malone's prodigious output has been challenged but never matched.

Seven times, once before his record game and six times following it, players have scored six times in a game. The most recent was Darryl Sittler, whose six goals and four assists for the Toronto Maple Leafs against the visiting Boston Bruins on Feb. 7, 1976, is in the record books as most points in one game.

Toronto Maple Leafs' Darryl Sittler (l.) and St. Louis Blues' Red Berenson, the last NHL players to score six goals in a game, Sittler in 1976, Berenson in 1968.

Newsy Lalonde of the Montreal Canadiens was the first to score a double hat trick, that coming against the St. Patricks on Jan. 10, 1920. Malone had a six-goal night against the Ottawa Senators on March 10, 1920.

The others: Toronto's Corb Denneny, Jan. 26, 1921, against the Hamilton Tigers; Ottawa's Cy Denneny, March 7, 1921, against the Tigers; Detroit Red Wings' Syd Howe, Feb. 3, 1944, against the New York Rangers; and St. Louis Blues' Red Berenson, Nov. 11, 1968, against the Philadelphia Flyers.

In recent months, Andrea Malone has been learning more about her great-grandfather. An osteopath at a clinic in Montreal suburban Pointe-Claire, she's been enjoying a turn back into the pages of an NHL legend.

"I probably learned that Joe was part of the family when my mom would talk about him," Malone said. "Mom had a chair that Joe had woodworked, and I know that my grandmother had a scrapbook with old newspaper clippings."

Andrea Malone, an osteopath at Vitality Multitherapy Clinic in Montreal-suburban Pointe-Claire, with a photo of her great-grandfather, Joe Malone, wearing the sweater of the Hamilton Tigers.

Malone, who coincidentally or not owns a dog named Molson, the family that has had an ownership stake in the Canadiens for all but 15 years since 1957, recalls going to her brother's hockey practices at a local arena, seeing photos of vintage teams displayed on the walls.

"My mom would say, 'Oh, that's your great-grandfather,'" she said with a laugh. "I remember her telling us that Joe had patented some kind of skate blade after his NHL career."

Malone hadn't, in fact, patented a skate, but he helped to develop one and was prominently featured in 1923 advertising for the D&M Joe Malone Hockey Tube Skates, steel blades marketed by the Draper-Maynard Company of Sutton, Quebec.

A Nov. 30, 1934, ad in the Montreal Daily Star heralded a Simpson's department store one-day sale on the "Joe Malone Skating Outfit," his approved blades riveted onto leather boots. The $10 price shaved to $4.95, the combination was said to be "a high-class outfit suitable for the older boys."

A 1923 advertisement for Joe Malone Tube Skates, and a Nov. 30, 1934, Montreal Star ad for the Joe Malone Skating Outfit, for half price at Montreal's Simpson's department store.

A 5-foot-10, 150-pound center and wing, Malone played 126 NHL games between 1917 and 1924 for the Canadiens, Bulldogs and Tigers, following an illustrious pre-NHL National Hockey Association career.

He scored an NHL total of 143 goals with 33 assists, the latter category loosely kept in those days, the League's goal-scoring champion in 1917-18 with Montreal (44 in 20 games) and in 1919-20 with Quebec (39 in 24 games), his points totals of 48 and 49 also best in the NHL.

In the NHA, he scored 179 goals over eight seasons.

Born Feb. 28, 1890, in Sillery, Quebec, a suburb five miles from Quebec City, Malone won the Stanley Cup three times, consecutively with the NHA Bulldogs in 1911-12 and 1912-13, then with the Canadiens in 1923-24, having begun his NHL career with Montreal in the League's first two years.

From a March 3, 2012, Quebec City Le Soleil newspaper section celebrating the 100th anniversary of the NHA Quebec Bulldogs' first of two consecutive Stanley Cup championships. Bulldogs captain Joe Malone is featured in this spread.

"Tall, rugged and a great stickhandler, Malone was also a potent defensive unit," Montreal Gazette columnist D.A.L. MacDonald wrote in 1934. "He had a fine poke check and like (Ottawa's Frank) Nighbor, used a long stick to break up opposing attacks."

Malone was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1950, Quebec City unveiling a plaque in his honor two years later in Le Colisee, the arena where the great Jean Beliveau was then tearing up a senior league with the Quebec Aces, graduating in October 1953 to the Canadiens.

"Hockey has come a long way since my time," Malone said that night, by then a draftsman for an electric appliances company.

"The brand of hockey today is excellent. Because of the forward pass -- you could only pass to the side or behind in my playing days -- the puck travels faster and the play is faster."

Joe Malone (l.) with fellow legend Aurel Joliat at the International Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston, Ontario, Malone joining the shrine in 1950, three years after Joliat's election.

Malone had begun his serious career in 1909 with the Bulldogs in the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association. Still in his teens, he turned pro earning $50 a week for Waterloo of the Ontario Professional Hockey League -- the "Trolley League," as it was called -- then returned to Quebec in 1910-11 as captain of the Bulldogs in the NHA.

Having sparkled in Quebec, scoring eight times against the Montreal Wanderers on Feb. 28, 1917, Malone was loaned to the Canadiens in 1917-18, when the Bulldogs didn't immediately join the new NHL. He scored an NHL career-high 44 goals in 20 games with Montreal his first season.

After eight more games with the Canadiens in 1918-19, he was on the move back to Quebec, the Bulldogs now in the NHL, setting the stage for his historic night against the St. Patricks.

A March 21, 1935, Montreal Gazette story on Joe Malone, and the Canadiens' Edouard "Newsy" Lalonde, the first NHL player to score six goals in a game.

Following two seasons with the Tigers in Hamilton from 1920-22 as player/coach, scoring 52 goals in 44 games while running the bench, Malone finished his career with the Canadiens with 30 games from 1922-24, largely as a substitute on his way to the 1924 Stanley Cup.

A tool designer by trade, he didn't get rich in the sport he loved, never earning more than $1,000 per season as a player (he was paid $2,000 as a playing coach in Hamilton) but he was proud to make ends meet with various off-season jobs.

Malone died in Montreal on May 15, 1969, at age 79, celebrated for a style of game that dazzled fans and confounded opponents.

Eight years before his death, he reflected on a very different era in a 1961 Hockey News profile written by Montreal sportswriter Vern DeGeer.

"We had a lot of ice time, but I'll tell you, we didn't go up and down the rink like they do today," Malone said. "We'd hustle when opportunities presented and then we'd loaf. At least I did. It was the only way you could go the 60 minutes, and a lot of players had to do that."

Joe Malone featured in the March 18, 1961, edition of The Hockey News.

Gainfully employed as a toolmaker in 1924, he cast his eye on a second-year player at Canadiens training camp and decided "I was ready for the easy chair" when he felt the breeze of Howie Morenz blow past him in a drill.

"I'm not old sentimentalist," Malone said in 1961, unwilling to compare his era to the NHL of the day. "I know we had some mighty tough operators, but they used the old wood on you, we seldom had any fistfights.

"What surprises and even alarms me today is that I'm getting so much publicity about my old scoring records. I'm naturally proud of them, but they belong in the past."

Of his historic seven-goal night, still evergreen 106 years later: "I guess I was just lucky."

If any of "Phantom" Joe's opponents were still alive, they'd tell you that luck had very little to do with it.

Top photo: Joe Malone in a portrait with Quebec Bulldogs, and as captain (front row center, behind the team's bulldog mascot) of the 1912-13 National Hockey Association team that won the Stanley Cup.