In the days when the Boston Garden was a modern, state of the art hockey palace, Bill Cowley was one of the game’s top performers. A standout center with the Bruins for a dozen years, he was one of the greatest to ever play the position, helping the Bruins to a pair of Stanley Cup titles and earning two mentions as the NHL’s most valuable player along the way.

Born in Bristol, Quebec, a small town not too far from Ottawa, he played his high school and junior hockey in the Canadian Capital, also suiting up briefly with the University of Ottawa side before trying his luck on the east coast. After a 50-point season with the Halifax Wolverines of the Maritime Senior hockey league, he turned pro, signing with a team that until recently had been the Ottawa Senators.

Financial difficulties had forced the team to relocate the summer before Cowley inked his contract so when he reported to his first NHL team in the fall of 1934, the 22-year-old joined the short-lived St. Louis Eagles and spent his rookie season wearing their red, white and blue sweater. He picked up five goals and seven assists in his initial season as he acclimatized himself to life on the rails.

The Eagles lasted a single season. Despite the presence of several established stars, they finishing dead last in the league with 28 points. They didn’t get a chance at a sophomore season, tossing in the towel at the conclusion of the season, done in not by a lack of fan support but by the travel costs involved in having to visit Toronto, Montreal, New York and Boston.

Cowley’s rights were picked up by Boston and he began his second NHL campaign as a Bruin. An immediate contributor to a squad littered with future Hall of Famers, he finished fifth in team scoring in his first season in Beantown. He picked up 21 points, a mark he would only improve upon in the years to come.

Cowley had all the skills needed to hold his own with the best in the game. A strong skater who could shoot, stickhandle and carry the puck better than most of his contemporaries, “Cowboy” Cowley’s greatest gift was the ability to feed his line-mates.

In a day when many goals went into the books unassisted and the score-sheet only occasionally recognized more than one helper, Cowley piled them up as, year by year, he increased his offensive production. He led the Bruins scoring parade for three straight seasons; from 1936-37 through 1938-39, climbing from 11th spot to sixth and finally third spot among all NHL point-getters. He earned the first of his five All-Star mentions in 1938 when he was named to the first team.

In the spring of 1939, the lanky pivot led all Bruins in postseason scoring with three goals and 11 assists as he drove the Bruins to their first Stanley Cup victory in a decade. Two years later, the team repeated with Cowley’s contributions coming in the regular season as a knee injury limited him to a pair of postseason outings.

He led the league in scoring with 62 points, 18 more than the runner-up posted. Seventeen of them came after he lit the lamp and 45 on plays he set up for other Bruins to complete, establishing a new NHL record for helpfulness. When the NHL awarded the 1941 Hart Trophy to their most valuable player, it went to Cowley. So did a spot on the All-Star team.

After losing most of the 1941-42 season to a fractured jaw, Cowley charged back to form the next year, leading the team in scoring once again. With the Kraut Line serving in the Canadian military, Cowley proved that he was as good a sharpshooter as playmaker, scoring 27 times, more than doubling his average production of previous years. His 72-point season put him a point back of the league leader, Chicago’s Doug Bentley, and the Hart Trophy ended up having Cowley’s name inscribed on it for the second time.

Cowley scored 30 goals in 1943-44, a career high, and 25 the year after that as he wrote his name in the NHL record books, becoming the league’s all-time leader for assists with his 264th and continued to add to the mark for the next three seasons.

When he retired after the 1946-47 schedule, Bill Cowley was the NHL’s all-time scoring leader with 548 points in 549 regular season games. It would be five years before Elmer Lach dethroned him.

After a year of play with an Ottawa senior squad, Cowley turned his hand to the management side of things, serving as coach and GM of the Vancouver Canucks of the Pacific Coast Hockey League before returning home to embark on a successful business career.

Elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1968, Cowley was one of four partners who founded the Ottawa 67s a year earlier. He passed away on December 31st, 1993.