Boston Bruins: 13 Best Passers in Team History

Tyler Seguin is on pace to compose the first 50-goal season by a Boston Bruin in over two decades and a degree of credit is owed to center Patrice Bergeron.

Bergeron has assisted on seven of Seguin’s first 11 goals this season, getting the primary helper on five, which means his pass has made one stop on Seguin’s stick en route to back of the net.

Depending on how long they last as linemates and to what extent they fulfill their potential, Seguin could effectively cement Bergeron’s status as one of Boston’s best all-time playmakers.

The kind of company Bergeron could join is assessed here in a list of the Bruins’ 13 greatest passers of all time.

13. Joe Thornton

Not long after he blossomed and assumed the Bruins’ captaincy, Thornton finished second among all NHL playmakers with 65 helpers in 2002-03.

He placed eighth in the league with 50 the following years 2003-04 and then led the league with 96 in 2005-06, which he split between Boston and San Jose. Specifically, he had charged up 24 assists in 23 games on the year before he was swapped to the other coast.

12. Don McKenney

In eight-plus seasons with Boston, McKenney thrice led the team in the assists category and once topped the NHL charts with 49 in 1959-60.

11. Jean Ratelle

Originally a member of the famed Goal-A-Game Line with the New York Rangers, Ratelle was every bit of a productive passer after the Bruins acquired him in 1975.

In 419 career games with the Bruins, Ratelle totaled 295 assists for a nightly average of 0.704, a rate exceeded by only seven other Boston playmakers.

10. Barry Pederson

As rookie in 1981-82, Pederson’s 48 assists were the most among Bruins forwards and second on the team overall behind Ray Bourque’s 49. The next year constituted a sophomore surge as he ran away with a team-best 61 helpers and 107 points. He again led the team in both categories with 77 assists and 116 points the following season.

After an injury-riddled 1984-85 campaign, Pederson bounced back for a 29-47-76 scoring log before being traded as part of the deal that brought Cam Neely to Boston.

9. Jason Allison

In three full seasons with the Bruins, not counting an injury-shortened 1999-2000 campaign, Allison logged 50-plus assists in 80-plus games, ranking among the NHL’s top 10 playmakers each time.

8. Johnny Bucyk

Between 21 seasons and 1,436 games played with the Bruins, Bucyk accumulated 794 assists for a final average of .553 per night.

He finished eight seasons with 40-plus helpers, four with 50-plus and one with 65. He led the team in the assists column three times, finished second another three and third twice. He was among the Bruins’ top five playmakers in 18 out of 21 seasons and thrice finished among the top 10 in the league.

And some of those years were when he was younger and the team was leaner, while others were when he was ostensibly beyond the peak of his game.

7. Milt Schmidt

The center of the potent Kraut Line for the better part of his career, Schmidt finished among the NHL’s top five playmakers in four out of 15 seasons. He finished first on that list with 30 assists in 1939-40, tied for fourth the following year, placed third in his first year back from serving in World War II and fourth in 1950-51.

6. Ray Bourque

Still the NHL’s all-time leading playmaker among defensemen and fourth overall with 1,169 career helpers, Bourque supplied a franchise-best 1,111 in his 20-plus years as a Bruin. And that’s not even counting the 125 goals he set up in 180 postseason appearances with the Black and Gold.

In all but three of his 22 total seasons, Bourque averaged at least one helper every two games, including 52 in his 2000-01 finale with Colorado. His two most prolific years were 1986-87, when he finished second in the league behind Wayne Gretzky with 72 assists, and 1990-91, when he tied a young Mark Recchi for fourth with 73.

5. Bill Cowley

Regarded as one of best stickhandlers of his time, Cowley set up all three of Mel “Sudden Death” Hill’s overtime goals in an epic 1939 Stanley Cup semifinal series against the Rangers. That same season, he led the NHL with 34 helpers in as many regular-season contests.

Two years later, he ran away with the league lead with 45 helpers, 17 more than the closest runner-up and matched that feat once more in 1942-43.

4. Marc Savard

Savard was an integral part of the Bruins’ most recent renaissance and could hardly be blamed for the false start to that resurgence under the misguidance of Dave Lewis in 2006-07.

In his first year as a Bruin, Savard assisted on 74 of the team’s 219 total goals, meaning he set up 33.8 percent of them.

For each of the next two seasons, he amassed 63 assists, good for sixth among league leaders in 2008-09. In addition, over the course of three playoff runs, he logged a cumulative 14 helpers in 25 games played.

3. Adam Oates

One of the Boston sports scene’s classiest personalities in the mid-1990s, Oates took outspoken pride in his passes and immense pleasure in watching his teammates slug them into the net.

In his first full year as a Bruin in 1992-93, Oates topped the NHL charts with 97 assists. He finished third overall in that department the next year with 80. By the time he was traded to Washington on March 1, 1997, he already had 52 helpers while playing for a Boston team that was on its way to finishing last in the standings.

Retired since the 2004-05 lockout, Oates ranks sixth all-time on the NHL’s playmaking leaderboard with 1,079 assists in his career.

2. Phil Esposito

At the time of his retirement, only Gordie Howe and Stan Mikita had more NHL career assists than Esposito. He led the league in that category twice and on four other occasions, he finished second only to teammate Bobby Orr.

In eight full seasons with Boston, he accumulated at least 50 helpers seven times. The exception was his first year in 1967-68, when he logged 49. He had 10 in his first 12 games of the 1975-76 campaign, at which point he was swapped to New York in the blockbuster deal that brought the aforementioned Ratelle to Boston.

1. Bobby Orr

Orr averaged 0.989 assists per game in his decade with the Bruins. Were it not for his faulty knees, he would have been the first NHL defenseman to break four figures in the assist column. He might have even reached 2,000 career points.

The numbers simply don’t lie. Orr had nine healthy seasons in Boston and led the league in playmaking four times, shared that lead with Bobby Clarke in 1974-75 and finished second to Esposito in 1972-73.

In 1970-71, Orr became the first NHL playmaker to hit triple-digits in a single season with 102 helpers. Since then, only Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux have matched or exceeded that feat.