The NHL is played in North America, and since its inception in 1917, most skaters have hailed from Canada or the United States. Not until the 1970s did players from Europe and other parts of the globe become NHL regulars, carving out their legacies while trailblazing a path for the game to expand to all corners of the world.
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Despite Americans being part of the game since the turn of the 20th century, the majority of their superstars didn’t begin setting records and becoming bona fide Hall of Famers until about the same time foreign players started to make their debuts. Moreover, despite the uptick in scoring throughout the league’s history, no American had ever netted 50 goals in a season until 1985, the league’s 68th year of operations. By then, Wayne Gretzky had set the single-season record at 92 in 1982.
Now that Auston Matthews has just become the fastest American skater to reach 50 goals, achieving the feat in 54 games, he remains the latest player from his home country to reach the plateau. By becoming the 12th skater to achieve the milestone in 2021, he became the seventh to do it twice. Who are the other American players with 50 or more goals in a season?
Bobby Carpenter – 1985
Bobby Carpenter was the first American skater to score 50 goals in a season, accomplishing the feat at 21. During his third NHL season, 1984-85, after being drafted third overall out of high school at the 1981 Entry Draft, he would net 50 without scoring a single hat trick that year. Interestingly, Carpenter never missed a game in his first five seasons but never scored more than 32 goals outside his magical campaign in 1984-85.
Jimmy Carson – 1988
At 19, Jimmy Carson became the youngest American player to score 50 goals, collecting a career-high 55 in 1987-88. Surprisingly, after 107 points that season, the Los Angeles Kings dealt him to the Edmonton Oilers in the Wayne Gretzky trade on Aug. 9, 1988. During that season, he had four hat tricks and one four-goal game against the Calgary Flames, where he finished the night with six points. Moreover, Carson played in 80 games, scoring in 40 of them.
Joe Mullen – 1989
Joe Mullen became the third American player to score 50 goals in a season, achieving the feat in 1988-89, the same season he helped the Flames win a Stanley Cup championship. Heading into that year, he had 254 career goals in 489 games, adding 51 to the total en route to becoming the first player from his home country to enter the 500-goal club.
Mullen would win two more Stanley Cup titles with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1991 and 1992 while finishing his career with seven 40-goal seasons on his resume. Two years after his retirement in 1997, he entered the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame before earning an enshrinement at the Hockey Hall of Fame as a first-ballot candidate in 2000.
Mike Modano – 1994
Mike Modano is a Stanley Cup champion and Hall of Famer who never scored 100 points during the regular season. As one of his generation’s most prolific scorers, he reached 50 goals just once, in 1993-94, the same year he finished with a career-best 93 points. Overall, he netted at least 20 goals in 16 of his 21 seasons, remaining the leading scorer in Dallas Stars history over a decade after retiring.
Chris Kreider – 2022
As the longest-tenured player in the current New York Rangers’ lineup, Chris Kreider became only the fourth skater in franchise history to surpass 50 goals in a single season. He finally scored over 30 goals during his magical year, finishing the campaign with 52 lamplighters, tallying a single hat trick in 81 games. Since 2021-22, Kreider followed that performance up with 36 goals in 2022-23 and is on pace to net over 30 in 2023-24.
Pat LaFontaine – 1990, 1993
It could be argued that Pat LaFontaine is one of the game’s greatest players, with 1,013 points in 865 games, never to win the Stanley Cup. Although he is fondly remembered for ending the Easter Epic in 1987 with a goal in the fourth overtime of Game 7 of a series between the New York Islanders and Washington Capitals, he’s a two-time 50-goal scorer.
As a Bill Masterton winner (1995), LaFontaine was 32 goals shy of the 500-goal club, thanks to nine seasons of 30 or more goals, including a personal best of 54 in 1989-90, while reaching 53 in 1992-93. Surprisingly, he scored 107 goals over those two seasons while registering just three hat tricks. Additionally, he found the back of the net in 78 out of 158 games, equaling 49% of the contests he skated in.
Kevin Stevens – 1992, 1993
Kevin Stevens won the Stanley Cup twice and is a two-time 50-goal scorer serving as Mario Lemieux’s linemate in the early 1990s. After a slow start, with just 17 goals in his first 40 NHL games, he netted 24 in 1989-90 before erupting for 40, followed by back-to-back campaigns of 54 and 55 goals. Between 1991-92 and 1992-93, when he collected 109 goals in 152 games, Stevens had two four-goal games and five hat tricks. He reached 41 goals in 1993-94 and never tallied more than 25 over the remainder of his career, which ended in 2002.
Jeremy Roenick – 1992, 1993
In 20 seasons, Jeremy Roenick scored 1,216 points in 1,363 games, becoming one of America’s most prolific scorers. At 22, he netted 53 goals in 1991-92 before following up that season with 50 goals in 1992-93, the only two times the U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer joined the 50-goal club. Over 164 games, he scored 103 goals with just two hat tricks, achieving his only four-goal game in 1991. Since retiring in 2009, Roenick remains only one of five Americans to score 500 goals in the NHL.
Keith Tkachuk – 1996, 1997
Keith Tkachuk broke into the NHL with the original Winnipeg Jets, netting 50 goals during the team’s final season in Manitoba in 1995-96. When he donned a Phoenix Coyotes jersey for the first time, he tallied a career-high 52 goals to lead the NHL in the category. In 18 seasons, he collected 538 goals to rank third amongst Americans, finishing with 1,065 points in 1,201 games. Despite not winning a single award, Tkachuk entered the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2012.
Auston Matthews – 2022, 2024
The record for most goals by an American skater is 741, held by Brett Hull. At just 26, Auston Matthews has already surpassed 350 goals in just over 530 games, meaning he’s already netted 47.2% of the goals needed to claim the record for himself. Interestingly, Hull only had 302 goals through the first 379 games of his legendary career, meaning that Matthews is ahead of the pace set by Hull in the early 1990s.
John LeClair – 1996, 1997, 1998
John LeClair made up one-third of the famous Legion of Doom line with the Philadelphia Flyers in the mid-1990s. Anchored by Canadian Eric Lindros and Swedish star Mikael Renberg, LeClair scored 152 goals in 246 games from 1996 to 1998. Despite never tallying more than 100 points in a single season, he tallied 97 in back-to-back years. After this unprecedented stretch, he netted 43 and 40 goals in the following campaigns to finish with 406 career goals in 967 games, entering the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010.
Brett Hull – 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
Hull’s dad was hockey legend Bobby “The Golden Jet” Hull, arguably the best sniper during the 1960s. From 1957 to 1980, he terrorized goalies in the league, finishing his Hall of Fame career with 610 lamplighters. His son, Brett, was born in 1964 in Belleville, Ontario. Still, after failing to qualify for the Canadian 1986 World Championship team, he used his dual citizenship to represent the United States for the remainder of his career. Therefore, despite his birth certificate, it can be argued that Hull is the greatest American skater in NHL history, owning the country’s goal record thanks to five 50-goal seasons.
In NHL history, only three skaters have ever scored more than 80 goals in the regular season: Wayne Gretzky (92, 87), Mario Lemieux (85), and Hull with 86 in 1990-91, which remains the American record. After just 74 goals in his first two seasons, with a high of 41 in 1988-89, he collected 72 goals in 1989-90 before destroying his own mark with an unheralded 86 goals in 1990-91 to win the Hart and Lester B. Pearson trophies.
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However, he wasn’t done just yet, finishing the 1991-92 season with 70 goals before watching his totals dip to 54 in 1992-93 and 57 in 1993-94. In 392 games (five seasons), Hull lit the lamp 339 times for a goal-per-game average of 0.86% while scoring 17 hat tricks. Interestingly, he wouldn’t collect his first four-goal game until 1995, earning two that season while following up with one more in 2001.
Upon retiring, the NHL’s fifth-highest goal scorer entered the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009, followed by the Hockey Hall of Fame a year later.
Historical Perspective
There’s no denying that Matthews may be this generation’s best goal-scorer, which has led to some chatter that he could someday challenge Getzky’s record of 894 goals. However, before we get ahead of ourselves, we should appreciate Matthews’ nightly performances as he continues to break NHL records held by Americans. Considering how far the U.S. Hockey program has come over the past three decades, many believe the country’s best era may have been 20 years ago, but in reality, the all-time greatest players may be just getting started.
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