‘Crazy night’: Sittler’s 10-point game still stands as NHL record 50 years later

TORONTO – Darryl Sittler remembers the usual noise in the newspapers.

Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard — mercurial, headline-seeking, controversial — had sounded off to the press about his team’s lack of a centre to play between Lanny McDonald and Errol Thompson.

“But that was totally Ballard,” Sittler, a centre, recalled. “How he was.”

Despite the usual bluster coming from Maple Leaf Gardens’ corner suite, head coach Red Kelly kept Sittler with McDonald and Thompson when Toronto hit the ice at home against the Boston Bruins on Feb. 7, 1976.

It turned out to be the correct decision.

Sittler put up a jaw-dropping 10 points — six goals and four assists — that stunning Saturday to set an NHL record that still stands almost 50 years later.

“None of us really know why the magic was there that night, but it was,” Sittler said in a phone interview. “Here we are all these years later. It’s still a record, and still people are celebrating.” 

Those celebrations will again take centre ice Tuesday when the Maple Leafs honour an achievement that has stood for nearly a half-century when Toronto hosts the Buffalo Sabres in the team’s final home date before the Olympic break.

“I’m glad that I’m still alive to enjoy it, to share it with the fans, to share it with my teammates, to share it with my family,” Sittler said.

The game played 50 winters ago, broadcast across the country on “Hockey Night in Canada,” ended as an 11-4 final. Sittler broke the record of eight points previously set by Maurice (Rocket) Richard in 1944 and matched by Bert Olmstead in 1954. 

“It was certainly a crazy night,” McDonald recalled. “But it was a great night.”

A total of 11 different players have registered eight-point contests in the NHL — Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux each did it twice — with Sam Gagner being the last to accomplish the feat in 2012. 

“When I had the record that night, I didn’t know how big it really was or how big it was going to continue to be,” said Sittler, who turned 75 in September. “When both Gretzky and Lemieux were going through their careers in the 1980s, I really thought each one of these two guys was going to tie or break it.

“And here we are.”

Things got going with a pair of assists in the first period before the Kitchener, Ont., product scored a hat trick and set up two other goals in the second to give him seven points. The Maple Leafs’ statistician rushed down from the press box during the intermission to let Sittler know he sat just one point shy of equalling Richard and Olmstead’s mark.

“That’s when the guys in the dressing room knew that there was a record to possibly tie or break,” Sittler said. “We went out in the third period, and it just kept rolling.”

The 25-year-old captain scored his fourth goal just 44 seconds after the restart off the rush and set a new high-water mark when he fired another puck home midway through the period.

Sittler then capped the performance with a sixth goal — and 10th point — when his pass from behind the net caromed in off the skate of Bruins defenceman Brad Park.

“We were just having so much fun,” said McDonald, also a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, who finished with four points that night. “Players jumping on giddy thinking, ‘OK, maybe if I stay out a little late with Darryl, I’ll get a point.’ It was so much fun.”

Bruins head coach Don Cherry left rookie third-string goaltender Dave Reece in for all 11 goals because Gerry Cheevers was back from the World Hockey Association and scheduled to make his homecoming at Boston Garden the following night after 3 1/2 seasons playing for the Cleveland Crusaders.

“It wasn’t like Dave Reece was a bad goalie,” Sittler said. “When you watch the goals, not to freaking boast about it, but a lot of them were just inside the post or a deflection or whatever it might have been. Some nights that happens to players and happens to goalies. The puck has eyes.” 

And to this day, fans still stop Sittler to talk about a banner moment for an Original Six franchise that hasn’t had many through the years.

“The fact that, unfortunately, we haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967, this is a feel-good story that continues on,” he said. 

“In today’s world, it’s nice to have feel-good things.” 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 26, 2026.