Maurice Richard, better known as Rocket Richard, was an icon of not only the Montreal Canadiens but the league in general. He was the all-time leading scorer of his era idolized by hockey fans around the nation, however some bad did come from The Rocket’s fame. Richard had one job to do on the ice and that was to score goals. Nobody did this job better than the “Rocket”, he was unstoppable from the blue-line in, filling the nets with rubber. During this era scoring 20 goals in a single season turned a player into a star. To Richard, this was nothing special as he exceeded this amount for 14 out of his 18 seasons played. For nine of these season he scored over 30 and for the other 5 he broke the 40 goal plateau. It was just common knowledge that if Richard got one goal, others would soon follow. In fact, on 26 occasions, he even potted three or more goals in the same game, a big achievement of the time. In 1944, he set an NHL record that would stand for 30 years when he scored eight points in a single game. Even after performing at such a high level he still maintained that he was nothing more than an …show more content…
Within minutes after the final ruling was released, the NHL head office in Montreal was receiving hundreds of phone calls from enraged fans, many of them making death threats against NHL President Clarence Campbell. Even though fans were outraged by the suspension, the general feeling around the league was that the punishment could have been more severe, Detroit Red Wings general manager said that Campbell “could do no less” and “I thought he would be suspended until January 1 of next season.” Ted Lindsay, Red Wing forward who had been suspended earlier that season for a similar incident, expressed the strong opinion that Richard was lucky to not get suspended for life. Nevertheless public outrage still poured in about what fans thought was excessive