Did Lester Patrick score eight points in a loss?

A Stookie Allen cartoon in the Brooklyn Daily Times of Jan. 7, 1931 claimed Lester Patrick held a very unusual scoring record. He “once scored six goals in a single game. Yet his team lost 9-8. [Lester] also got two assists on the other two goals! (The record for professional hockey.)”

Something very similar appeared in several Canadian newspapers in November 1931: “He scored in one game, six goals and two assists. Yet his team lost 9-8. The record still stands.” A distilled version of the same item appeared in US papers the following month and the same words were used in Elmer Ferguson and Jimmie Thompson’s Inside Hockey column published in many papers in February and March 1933.

But we aren’t given any hints when this happened or who the opponent was. Did this game really occur?

Brooklyn Daily Times, Jan. 7, 1931

By virtue of the fact that assists are mentioned, it must have been 1912 or later, which is when the Pacific Coast Hockey Association started recording them. Did the PCHA ever have a 9-8 game? It’s easy enough to check, as all of the game scores are listed on Wikipedia. It did not.

The closest thing was Vancouver’s 10-8 victory over Victoria on Jan. 26, 1912. Lester had three goals for Victoria in that game and brother Frank had two for Vancouver. So Lester did at least have a hat trick in a loss and maybe he would have had some assists if they had been invented.

(This was also a game where Lester was briefly in net while his goaltender served a penalty. According to the Vancouver Province, “Lester Patrick went into goal and for a minute was doing circus stunts blocking shots.”)

Curiously, when Vancouver set the PCHA record for goals in a game on Feb. 1, 1916, in a 16-4 thrashing of Victoria, Cyclone Taylor led the way … with six goals and two assists. Coincidence? (Another astonishing thing about the latter game: after the first period, Victoria led 3-0. Vancouver scored 16 goals in two periods. One year and one day later, Seattle tied the single-game scoring record with a 16-1 outburst over Spokane.)

The PCHA merged with the Western Canada Hockey League in 1924. The league folded in 1926. During those two seasons, did Victoria ever lose 9-8? It did not. In fact, only once did the Cougars give up more than four goals. It’s a moot point anyway, because after 1917, Lester never scored six goals in a season, much less in a single game.

What does that leave? The Society for International Hockey Research database records Lester scoring bushelfuls of goals and also picking up assists in 1905-06 and 1906-07 with Montreal of the ECAHA and 1909-10 with the Renfrew of the NHA. But I believe this is the result of modern historians scouring newspaper accounts to award assists retroactively.

Did Lester ever score six goals in a game anywhere, regardless of assists? Yes: in fact, playing for Nelson, he had seven against Rossland in 1909. But Nelson won that game 11-4.

I conclude that Lester’s six goal, two assist night in a losing cause is probably a myth. But it got me wondering: what is the NHL record for most points by a player in a loss? Fortunately, because we live in the days of miracle and wonder, it was possible to look this up on the NHL’s website, although it took a bit of scrolling.

The record belongs to Kirk Muller, who had three goals and three assists for New Jersey in an 8-6 loss to Pittsburgh on Oct. 29, 1986. This remains the Devils franchise record for points in a game. Amazingly, in the same game, Kevin LaVallee had three goals and three assists for Pittsburgh. LaVallee finished the season with 18 goals and 20 assists.

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Lester’s brother Frank famously scored six goals on March 5, 1912 in Vancouver’s 10-6 win over New Westminster, setting a record for most goals in a game by a defenceman that has never been equalled in major league hockey.

Only one NHL defenceman has ever scored five: Toronto’s Ian Turnbull on Feb. 2, 1977 against Detroit. There have been seven other four-goal games by NHL defensemen, the first two by Harry Cameron. No one else has done it more than once. Paul Coffey was the most recent, in 1984.

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I’ll throw in one more Patrick goal-scoring story, which was much easier to check. This is from a Feg Murray cartoon that appeared in many newspapers on March 11, 1927:

With 14 minutes to play and the score 10 to 10, [Lester] Patrick won the 1906 Stanley Cup for the Wanderers by shooting two sensational goals against Ottawa … In the first game, played at Montreal, the Wanderers led 9 to 1. Patrick scored eight of his team’s tallies. As total scores counted in the series, the Wanderers backers thought they were sitting pretty when Lester opened the next contest at Ottawa with another goal, putting his team nine points to the good. But, much to their consternation, their opponents came back to cage nine shots in a row, tying the score at 10 all. Then Lester Patrick came through with two sensational individual rushes down the ice to score two more goals and win the series.

This is actually pretty close to the truth, with a few exceptions. Montreal did indeed win the first game 9-1. However, Lester only scored once, which is rather a lot fewer than eight. In the second game, Montreal did open the scoring, but not on a goal by Lester. Then Ottawa did storm back to take a 9-1 lead and tie the series before Lester scored a couple of late goals to give Montreal the Stanley Cup by a combined score of 12-10. Still pretty mind-boggling.