Follow me on Twitter :
Claude Provost is the sixth all-time scoring right-winger to lace up skates for the Montreal Canadiens franchise. Born and raised in this very city, the 5’09… right-handed sniper added 9 Stanley Cup victories to his name. He would score at least 12 goals a season between 1955-1970 playing for the only team he ever loved.
In 1005 regular season games, he posted 254 goals and 589 points. He did fairly well during the playoffs as well, posting 63 points in 126 games while using his awkward yet lightning -fast skating stride to zoom past opposing left-wingers and defensemen in order to fill the back of the net. While the focus of my top-10 list of right-wingers is primarily on the number of times the red lamp was lit, Provost struck a healthy balance between being a playmaker and a natural goal-scorer as his 335 regular-season assists demonstrate.
During the 1961-1962 season, he had a career-high 33 goals. Known first and foremost as a defensive specialist, he’d be bounced around the lineup due to injuries and would surprise everyone with the aforementioned statistic as well as following up with 20 tallies the next season and 27 two years after that. His 6 goals and 2 assists in 11 playoff games of a Stanley Cup-winning 1958-1959 campaign would be his best output, and he amazingly scored only 4 seconds into the start of a period in 1957.
It’s shocking that Provost’s name is engraved 9 times on Lord Stanley’s Cup yet he was never inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. In 1968, the Bill Masterton Trophy was introduced into the National Hockey League and he would be the first-ever recipient that very same year.
Perhaps that award served as a consolation prize to the late Provost, who sadly passed away in 1984 at the age of 51.