Isles great Mike Bossy admired Matthews' scoring `gift'
Prolific hall of fame sniper discussed Maple Leafs star's play two years ago
The last time I spoke to Mike Bossy — in the last month of his life two years ago — we talked on the phone for almost an hour, mostly about goal scoring, a lot of the conversation about Auston Matthews.
Bossy said he didn't know Matthews personally, although he thought they had met somewhere at some league function. But he felt a kinship of sorts to the Maple Leaf, the greatest goal scorer of one generation trying to explain the greatest goal scorer of this generation.
“Watch Matthews,” said Bossy, “he loves to score goals. He has that natural goal-scorer's instinct. He has the shot or, shall I say, shots you need. You can't always explain scoring and you can't always define it, it just happens.”
The hall of famer talked a lot about Matthews' release — how quickly he shot the puck, how the puck came from different angles and various stick positions, how his delivery made him different than anyone else in the game. He said that two years ago this month. That was nearing the end of Matthews' chase for 60 and nearing the end of Bossy's life.
He died at the age of 65 on April 15, 2022.
“It's hard to put into context what Matthews is doing at this time,” Bossy said on the phone from Montreal. “But he's doing it. And it's great for the game, great to see.
“What I like about Matthews now is he's celebrating his goals more, he seems to be more emotionally involved than in the past.”
And that was two years ago — the celebrations this season have become even larger.
Bossy didn't get to see the growing history we have been party to this season. Bossy didn't get to watch Matthews on this breathtaking journey toward 70 goals.
Matthews has 68 goals with three games left to play for the Leafs.
Bossy never did score 70 in a season, but then he never did play an 82-game regular season. The seasons were 80 games back then.
Bossy scored 69 goals in his second NHL season and went on to have four more 60-plus goal-scoring seasons in the 10 years he played before a debilitating back injury ended his career early.
The all-time statistics list Bossy as the greatest goals-pergame player in NHL history. He is first at .762 a game — a career 61-goal-a-season player — just ahead of Mario Lemieux at .754 and then Matthews at .654.
Then the numbers become open to interpretation.
When Bossy did his scoring, the NHL averaged 3.74 goals per game, per team. In his greatest goal-scoring season, his New York Islanders scored 358 goals in 1979, 4.47 goals per game.
Obviously, this is Matthews' greatest goal-scoring season.
The Maple Leafs have 293 goals and have averaged 3.71 goals per game this season. Matthews is scoring 23 per cent of Toronto's goals. The Leafs may hit 300 goals for the season.
In Bossy's 69-goal season, he scored 19 per cent of the Islanders' goals. At 23 per cent, if Matthews continued on that pace with a team scoring 358 goals in a season, that would give him more than 80 goals.
Which would make a reasonable case for Matthews, at this time, with 3.11 goals being scored per game, being the greatest goal scorer of all-time, career-wise.
Bossy never got the chance to talk about Matthews' place in history but he knew he was heading to special circumstances. He knew he was seeing something special.
He would watch him in pregame warm-ups, playing pitch and catch on the ice with Mitch Marner, practising one-timers and quick release wrist shots and it reminded him of the days he would end practices working with Bryan Trottier, day after day, in the heyday of one of the most pronounced dynasties in hockey history.
Bossy, Trottier and friends won four Stanley Cups in New York. Matthews and Marner, to date, have combined with their teammates to win one playoff round.
That, more than anything else, is the difference between Matthews and Wayne Gretzky, Lemieux, Bossy, and the greatest goal scorers of all time.
Only Pavel Bure, along with Matthews, ranks among the best goal scorers ever without having a Stanley Cup to their name.
But Matthews, on the verge of 70, is putting up a number Bossy never mastered and neither did Alex Ovechkin or Bure.
Bobby Hull scored 77 goals in the WHA for Winnipeg, but the NHL doesn't acknowledge those numbers.
Since entering the NHL in 2016, Matthews has scored more goals than any other player: 367 after Thursday. Ovechkin ranked behind him with 327 and Leon Draisaitl after that at 326.
In Bossy's 10 NHL seasons, he scored 573 goals, 30 more than Gretzky and 112 goals more than Marcel Dionne.
He looked perfectly natural scoring goals from almost any angle and with almost any shot. He didn't aim, he told me more than once, he just let it go, quick as he could.
The quick release.
“He has that,” Bossy said of Matthews.
“It's his gift.”