10 NHL Records You Won't Believe

The National Hockey League (NHL) has existed in North America for nearly a century. Throughout those years, thousands of players have stepped onto the ice to compete for their respective clubs in an attempt to win the Stanley Cup. Perhaps more than any sport, hockey is a team game that requires a balanced roster for prolonged success. It takes a variety of players to compose a championship team. Superstars, grinders, stay-at-home defensemen, and reliable goaltenders: all are necessary components to a prosperous NHL franchise.

Given the team nature of the sport, it is all the more impressive when one player is talented enough to receive individual recognition for their efforts. With thirty teams in the league today, it is hard enough for a current player to win an annual award. But with ninety-nine years of history, it’s truly arduous to break a NHL record.

Players like Wayne Gretzky and Martin Brodeur were able to cement their legendary status by setting numerous records in well-known categories such as most career point and most regular-season shutouts. While these records are indeed impressive, hockey is a unique sport and boasts its share of unique accolades.

Whether simply odd, notably impressive, or downright ridiculous, here are ten NHL records you won’t believe.

Okay, so this isn’t really a record, but it’s a ridiculous piece of information nonetheless.

The Art Ross Trophy is awarded annually to the NHL player who leads the league in points at the end of the regular season. Named after Arthur Howey "Art" Ross, the trophy debuted following the 1947-48 season, and has been awarded a total of sixty-five times to twenty-seven players throughout its history. In other words, over half of all Art Ross winners have won the trophy on multiple occasions. But, if all the seasons from 1980-1981 to 2000-2001 were somehow removed from hockey history, the trophy would have been presented a total of forty-five times to only twenty-four players.

For those not mathematically inclined, that means that in those twenty years, only three individuals lead the NHL in points at the end of the season. Those three players were: Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and Jaromír Jágr.

Wayne Gretzky won the trophy a whopping ten times, including seven consecutive from 1981-1986 with the Edmonton Oilers. Mario Lemieux captured the award six times over the span of ten years. Finally Jaromír Jágr, who still plays in the NHL today at the age of forty-four, managed to win the Art Ross once in 1995 followed by four consecutive years from 1998-2001. Both Lemieux and Jágr played for the Pittsburgh Penguins during this time.

To put how ludicrously prolific these three players were during that time into perspective, since Jaromír Jágr last received the award, the Art Ross Trophy has been won by eleven different players in those fourteen years.