Howie Morenz: The Greatest Season in the Life of Hockey’s First Legend

Larry Ostola speaks with Donald Murray about his book Howie Morenz: The Greatest Season in the Life of Hockey’s First Legend

Howie Morenz was hockey’s first superstar, a dazzling skater and prolific goal scorer who electrified crowds while leading the Montreal Canadiens to three Stanley Cups. The 1930-31 season finds Morenz at the peak of his powers. His Canadiens dominate the NHL and Morenz is leading the league in scoring while earning his second Hart trophy as most valuable player in hockey.

Following him game by game through this remarkable season, author Donald Murray weaves in the backstory of how Morenz became the most exciting and successful hockey player of professional hockey’s first half century. With keen insight and gripping prose, he describes Morenz’s unparalleled agility, his ferocious will, and brilliant leadership, among other elements of what made him the league’s most extraordinary talent – one the whole hockey world would mourn when he died at age 34 of a broken leg suffered in his final game.

Donald Murray grew up in Lachine on the island of Montreal, Quebec, during the Rocket, Beliveau, and Lafleur eras of accomplishment by les Canadiens. After taking a Canadian Studies degree at Mount Allison University, in New Brunswick, followed by a sojourn of a few years in Yukon, he pursued legal studies at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and has based his criminal defence and human rights legal practice there since the mid-1980s.

Image Credit: Sutherland House