Dubbie Bowie (August 24, 1880 in Montreal, Quebec - April 8, 1959) was a Canadian ice hockey player generally regarded as the greatest player of the pre-NHL era of the sport. Bowie played centre and rover for numerous amateur Montreal teams in the 1890s as a teenager, and for the Montreal Victorias of the CAHL and the ECAHA from the 1896 to the 1908 seasons. He was a five-time scoring champion and scored an unprecented 234 goals in 80 recorded league games. Bowie played for the Vics' final Stanley Cup champion club in 1898. An accomplished stickhandler who credited his skill to employing an unusually short stick, he was cited in many all-star lists as one of the very best forwards of hockey's first half-century.
On February 20, 1901, Bowie of the Montreal Victorias scored seven goals in a game and was well positioned to dominate the CAHL, and two weeks later, he scored 6 goals against the Montreal Shamrocks. He finished the season with 24 goals, 14 more than his nearest rival. He averaged almost three goals pre game.
Bowie never played professional hockey, famously refusing all importuning and turning down large offers, and was quoted as saying, "I am an amateur, was an amateur, and will die an amateur." He weathered a scandal in 1907 where it was alleged that he had taken pay from the professional Montreal Wanderers club, but the allegations were proven baseless -- although the Wanderers did send him a grand piano in anticipation of Bowie's acceptance of their offer, an inducement he refused to receive.
Bowie retired from major play in 1909, when the professional National Hockey Association formed and the Victorias faded from major hockey prominence. He skated ten games for the Vics in the next two seasons in lower level amateur competition, but his retirement was punctuated by an injury in 1910. He became a referee in retirement, officiating for the NHA thereafter.
He was one of the original inductees of the Hockey Hall of Fame when it was formed in 1945.
