Vic Hadfield Legendary Moments No. 1: 50 in '72

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Vic Hadfield describes himself this way: "I am a Ranger through and through."
He was the captain of the Rangers in the 1970s, the first 50-goal scorer in the history of the franchise, the ultimate teammate - and on Dec. 2, his No. 11 will take its place among the Rangers legends in the Garden rafters.
NYRangers.com will present 11 of the great moments of Hadfield's career, 11 snapshots of the Blueshirts' legendary left winger, 11 for No. 11 - counting down to the celebration of Vic Hadfield Night presented by Budweiser before the Blueshirts take on the Winnipeg Jets on Dec. 2 at Madison Square Garden.
Vic Hadfield averaged 12 goals over two seasons of junior hockey. He scored five goals in 62 games in his first pro season, for Buffalo of the American League. As a rookie with the Rangers in 1961-62, Hadfield played 44 games and found the back of the net three times.
If you had told that rookie that, one decade later, he would become a 50-goal scorer in the National Hockey League?
"I probably would have gone and bought a lotto ticket and figured I had a much better chance," Hadfield said.
The big left winger who had made his way into the NHL as a bruiser, left it with 323 goals over 1,002 games - 262 of those goals in 841 games as a Ranger. But entering the 1971-72 season, while he had already put together four consecutive campaigns of 20-plus goals, Hadfield had never scored more than 26 in a single year.
On April 2, 1972, Hadfield came into Madison Square Garden for the final game of the regular season sitting on 48 goals - already a single-season Rangers record, but two shy of that magic number that only five players had ever reached before. The Canadiens were in town, three points back of the second-place Rangers, who had 109 points to Montreal's 106. The two were locked in to meet in the opening round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the Rangers had already secured the home-ice advantage. Montreal hadn't been able to beat the Rangers that season: the Blueshirts had won three of their meetings and tied the other two.

So while the Canadiens may have been out to save a little face against their soon-to-be playoff opponent, there really wasn't a whole lot for the Rangers to play for, apart from one thing.
Get the puck to Hadfield.
"I tried, I really, really tried," Rod Gilbert, the GAG Line's right wing, told NYRangers.com. "I tried to get it to him like I always tried to get it to him, but maybe a little more. I assisted on one of them, I want you to know that."
What Hadfield didn't want people to know was that he could barely handle his stick that night. Playing in Toronto on April 1, the night before the season finale, Hadfield took a wallop to his right hand, the top hand for a lefty shot, that tore ligaments in the thumb. He tried what he could to conceal the injury, without a lot of success.
"I got whacked on my thumb, my right thumb. I wasn't going to say anything," Hadfield said. "So then we get in to play Montreal, and I was sitting downstairs with Emile (Francis) and a couple other guys, and I went to pick up my coffee with my right hand, and my thumb went right back up into the forearm, and I dropped the coffee. Emile looked, and there's my thumb up on my wrist. It wasn't sore, but it looked pretty bad at least.
"So I took my thumb and I put it back into place. Emile's looking at me, I'm looking at him, and I just kept my right hand down from there. Drank a different cup of coffee with my left hand."
Concerned that Francis might balk at playing him - even more concerned that his upcoming playoff opponents might smell blood - "I didn't tell anybody. I didn't want it out that I've got a bad thumb going on here. So I got some tape, and I had a doctor tape my thumb to the next finger to keep it in place. And that right hand, that's my top hand, so I just gripped the stick with the three fingers. Until the end of the year, and then I had surgery."
In spite of his attempts to conceal it, the injury was out there - and so, too, was Hadfield on the final night of the season. But the 1971-72 finale saw the Rangers get off to perhaps their worst start all year, when Pete Mahovlich scored 54 seconds into the game, and Jacques Lemaire just 25 seconds after that. Before the first period was out, Mahovlich and Jimmy Roberts each scored shorthanded in a 36-second span, and after 20 minutes the Habs held a 4-1 lead.
But then the Rangers began building a comeback. Hadfield got it started - off an assist from Gilbert, don't forget - 12:57 into the second, beating his former junior teammate Denis DeJordy, who was manning Montreal's nets in place of Ken Dryden. It was Hadfield's 49th goal of the year. Rod Seiling scored 35 seconds after that to slice it to 4-3 after two.
But once the Canadiens scored twice early in the third, and Brad Park's goal made it 6-4 with 6:39 left, time was running short on the regular season, and on Hadfield. Until, with 5:14 left in the game - in the season - the Rangers worked the puck around until Seiling threw a pass down low to Hadfield, who fired it in. No. 50.
"He was never known as a goal scorer, so that was more than I expected, maybe," Francis said. "I was happy as hell."
In the dressing room afterward, Hadfield posed for photos with the two pucks he had put in that night. Then he held up his right thumb and said, "First I've got to thank my teammates for the season. Then I've got to thank the doctor who bandaged me so I could play."
He became the first Ranger and only the sixth man in NHL history to score 50 goals in a season. Rocket Richard, Boom Boom Geoffrion, Bobby Hull, Phil Esposito, Johnny Bucyk. Vic Hadfield.
Hadfield says that in his wildest dreams he never imagined he could score 50 in a season, that the lottery had better odds. But there was at least one Hall of Famer - a five-time 50-goal scorer - who figured he was capable of it.
"Oh absolutely," said Bobby Hull. "All Vic had to do was set his mind to scoring goals instead of only being the big strong bully on left wing. Because all my career I never found a stick long enough to score from the penalty box.
"You have to have a proper mindset - if you're going to score 50 goals, you must get a proper mindset that you are going to score as often as you can when you get the opportunities. It won't happen every game, and it won't happen every shift, but when it rears its head, you'll be there ready to take advantage and you'll be able to put the puck in the net.
"That's what Vic did."
READ MORE: Vic Hadfield Legendary Moments No. 2: Francis Forms the GAG Line