Five of the Most Surprising 50-Goal Seasons in NHL History

The 50-goal mark is a milestone usually reserved only for the leagues' most elite stars, but every so often, a more unexpected player comes out of nowhere to put together a 50-goal campaign that can even be the spark their team desperately needs.

No matter the player, a 50-goal campaign should be celebrated. It's even better when a player who may not have been projected to hit the milestone finds their way to the mark. 

The 2023-24 NHL season had exactly that, with Zach Hyman and Sam Reinhart hitting 50, two players who are now squaring off in the Stanley Cup final. But it's not the first instance an unexpected player has found his way to 50 goals in a single season.

The 2005-06 NHL season will forever have a special place in league history. It was the first season coming out of the season-long 2004-05 lockout and saw the debut of two generational talents in Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby.

The NHL was in a brand new place and had some amazing stories to follow, with one of the most unexpected but easiest to root for being the offensive explosion of Jonathan Cheechoo.

Cheechoo had already shown the ability to score at the pro level, with a pair of 20-goal seasons in the AHL and a 28-goal campaign for the Sharks before the lockout in 2003-04. Cheechoo’s numbers would take a leap through the 2005-06 season after the Sharks finalized a deal to bring in all-star center Joe Thornton from the Bruins. Cheechoo’s scoring pace jumped from 0.29 goals per game before the trade to 0.84 after.

With Thornton's playmaking, Cheechoo reached 56 goals, winning the Rocket Richard and besting the likes of Jaromir Jagr, Dany Heatley and Ilya Kovalchuk, as well as a rookie Ovechkin who scored 54. 

Injuries hampered Cheechoo after 2005-06, as he would follow up his breakout year with 37 goals. It proved to be his final NHL season of scoring more than 30 goals.

With the legends who have had 50-goal seasons in Detroit, including Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov, you'd be forgiven for forgetting about Ray Sheppard's 52-goal campaign in 1993-94. 

Sheppard was a consistent 30-goal scorer, reaching the mark three times before in his career. But in a season where Yzerman played in only 58 games due to injury, Sheppard picked up the slack. 

He and Fedorov both recorded 50 goals, while 1993-94 also saw Sheppard reach the 90-point mark for the first time in his career. That season was a high mark as his career derailed due to injury. Still, Sheppard posted 30 goals in just 43 games during the 1994-95 season, a pace of 57 goals over a healthy 82-game campaign.

Sheppard remained a consistent 20-goal man in the league with San Jose, Florida, and Carolina but never came close again to his strongest year in Detroit.

Vic Hadfield is one of the greatest New York Rangers of all-time. A former captain, he was a fixture of the Blueshirts for much of the 1960s and 1970s. At the time of his retirement, he was fourth all-time in goals in a Rangers uniform. In 2009, the book 100 Ranger Greats named him the 20th greatest Ranger of all-time, and his No. 11 hangs in the rafters of Madison Square Garden.

Hadfield scored 20 goals in every season from 1967-68 to 1975-76, but what stands out about his run of 20 goals was 1971-72, his first and only season where he broke the 50-goal barrier. He finished second only to Boston's Phil Esposito for the most goals in the NHL that season.

Hadfield also became just the sixth player to score 50 at the time and the first player in Rangers history to hit the mark as he led New York all the way to the 1972 Stanley Cup final.

Jacques Richard is one of the NHL's biggest "what could have been" stories. 

After a remarkable junior career with the Quebec Remparts, Richard's pro career was plagued with injury and personal problems. 

While he'd record a 27-goal season with the Atlanta Flames in 1973-74, his play after Atlanta drafted him second overall in 1972 was a far cry from his junior days, which included a 160-point campaign in 1971-72 for the Remparts.

In 1980-81 with the Quebec Nordiques, eight years into his pro career, it looked like Richard finally put everything together with a 52-goal campaign. But that play couldn't be sustained. In 1981-82, he scored only 15 goals for Quebec and never again scored more than 16 goals in North American professional hockey, retiring after one final pro season in the AHL in 1982-83.

When it comes to the modern-day New York Rangers, Chris Kreider is easily one of the most consistent players to wear the uniform. 

He has nine 20-goal seasons, and in 2021-22, he became just the fourth Ranger to record a 50-goal campaign. 

Kreider also became just the 15th player all-time in NHL history to have a season with 50 goals with 25 of them on the power play. That season, he even broke the franchise-best mark for power-play goals in a season, with 24 previously set by Jaromir Jagr.

While Kreider's goal totals have continued to surpass the 30-goal barrier in subsequent seasons in 2022-23 (36) and 2023-24 (39), he's yet to get back to 2021-22's total of 52.