Could Mike Bossy have scored 1,000 NHL goals?

Islanders legend Mike Bossy won four Stanley Cups in New York but was forced to retire aged 30 due to injury. Could the NHL's all-time leader in goals per game have broken the hallowed 1,000-goal mark if he'd stayed healthy?

Video Transcript

NICK ASHBOURNE: There is some debate over who's the greatest goal scorer in the history of the NHL. And there are few valid choices you could make. Wayne Gretzky owns the league record with 894 goals. Gordie Howe has a ridiculous 975 if you count what he did in the WHA. And Alex Ovechkin could be considered the greatest goal scorer based on the era he's played in, and he's not done yet.

Now, in today's journey through the multiverse, we're going to look at Mike Bossy though. Mike Bossy is the NHL's all-time leader in goals per game at 0.762, but he was forced to retire after his age 30 season due to a series of back injuries. But in the infinite NHL universes out there, there has to be at least one where Mike Bossy stayed healthy. Today, we're going to dive deep and take a look at whether he could have fulfilled his promise as the greatest goal scorer the world's ever seen.

It's easy to say this guy scores more goals per game than anyone else. So he played the most games, he would have scored the most goals. As a result, we're going to set that bar a little bit higher. We're going to talk about a milestone that's unheard of for pro hockey players. We're talking about 1,000 goals.

For this exercise, we're not going to touch the beginning of Bossy's career or make him debut earlier. He did start his NHL career at the age of 21, which is a little bit older for someone trying to set a record like this. We're going to go with what's there and see where it takes us.

In order to find a career path for Bossy to mimic, we're going to look at some of the greatest goal scorers of all time who reached the age of 40. The reality is, though, when you look at the top 10 guys by goals per game, there's only one that truly stands out.

Mario Lemieux's career path is impossible to emulate. Cy Denneny and Babe Dye come from a totally different era. Pavel Bure had a similar career that ended in his early 30s. Guys like Alex Ovechkin and Auston Matthews, the book's not written on them yet.

So what we're left with is Brett Hull. Through his age 30 season, Hull scored a very similar amount of goals to Mike Bossy. He scored 0.75 per game, but he did face a pretty serious decline after that. From ages 31 to 34, however, a lot of that had to do with the era he played in which got far more defensive.

So we're going to measure Hull's decline in adjusted goals through age 30. He was at 0.69. And from ages 31 to 34, he went to 0.56, a decline of 18.4%. If Bossy had the same decline, but played every game from age 31 to age 34, we're adding another 205 goals to his total. That puts him at 778 entering his age 35 season.

We're not applying any kind of adjustment here because the years after Bossy retired were very similar from an offensive environment standpoint to the years just before. From age 35 to 39, Hull had a very similar decline in adjusted goals having them drop by 21.8%. If we apply the same decline to Bossy, we're looking at 200 goals over five seasons in his late 30s, but he is at this point entering the '90s, a more defensive era of hockey. So we're going to make a little bit of an adjustment and take away 19 of those goals.

Adding 181 goals to the total means that this alternate universe Mike Bossy has 959 goals to his name as his age 40 season dawns. And at this point, we have to leave Brett Hull behind. Although he did play in his 40s, it was after the lockout at the age of 41. And he only managed five games.

At this point, it's just about how much Mike Bossy wants 1,000 goals. He's averaged 36.2 over the last five seasons. And he only needs 41 more, which probably means he has to play for two more years.

It's going to be difficult. He's playing during a tight-checking physical era of hockey. And it might not be particularly fun, but at 6 feet, 186 pounds, Bossy is strong enough to make it in this version of the NHL.

He becomes the second player in league history to have 40 goals after the age of 40 with just Gordie Howe in that club with him, but they'll soon be joined by Jaromir Jagr, Teemu Selanne, and Mark Recchi. He gets it done on March 28, 1998 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto against the team that passed him up not once, but twice in the 1977 draft. At this point, Bossy has brought five Stanley Cups to the New York Islanders, the four we know about and one in 1992/93, where he helped put the team over the top. Meanwhile, Toronto has yet to see the finals once.

When he retires, Bossy still has some good hockey left in him, but his work is done. At the age of 41, he hangs up his skates as the greatest goal scorer of all time. What hypotheticals exist in your NHL multiverse? Let me know in the comments.