It’s one of the rarest feats in sports, rarer than a perfect game in baseball. It’s a goalie goal in hockey: a goal scored by the person on the ice whose only job is to prevent them.
Heading into Saturday night, NHL goaltenders had been credited with 15 goals across the entirety of NHL history — 13 in the regular season and two in the playoffs. There have been 23 perfect games in Major League Baseball history.
More than that, of those 15 goals, seven were really own goals by the opposing team, with the goaltender just the last person to touch the puck before the other team put the puck into their own net. That means NHL goaltenders had actually shot the puck into the opposing net for a goal just eight times in the entire 106-year history of the league.
On Saturday night, that became nine times when Boston Bruins goaltender Linus Ullmark shot the puck the length of the ice into the Vancouver Canucks’ vacated cage.
While it meant a loss for the home team, at least Canucks fans got to see an incredibly rare piece of NHL history.
It’s understandable why goalie goals are so rare: the circumstances have to be just right. The goaltender has to be pulled for the extra attacker, as no self-respecting goaltender is going to allow a shot from his opposing mate to slide past him. The puck has to get to the goaltender with time and space to play the puck. It typically has to be a two-goal game, as the goaltender won’t want to risk turning the puck over and giving up an easy game-tying goal.
After all that, the goaltender has to then hit the empty net from nearly 200 feet away, something that isn’t easy to do even when a goaltender isn’t under forechecking pressure, as we saw at this year’s All-Star Skills Competition.
It took seventy years for the first true goalie goal in the NHL, scored by Ron Hextall of the Philadelphia Flyers. It came on December 8, 1987, and it happened to be against the Boston Bruins. Also in the lineup for the Flyers on that night was current Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet.
Longtime Bruins play-by-play man Fred Cusick even anticipated the goal, saying, “Boy, he could score a goal sometime in a situation like this — Hextall is so strong in clearing.”
There’s a good reason why it took so long for a goalie goal to be scored: for the first few decades of NHL history, teams never pulled the goaltender for an extra attacker late in games.
The first team to ever pull their goaltender for an extra attacker was, oddly enough, also the Boston Bruins, when head coach Art Ross did it in 1931. Still, pulling the goaltender didn’t become standard practice until much later, so there were few opportunities for a goalie goal.
Even now, as pulling the goaltender earlier in the third period has become more popular and teams are doing it even when down by three, goalie goals are still exceedingly rare. The last goalie goal before Ullmark’s was three years ago when Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators scored on the Chicago Blackhawks on January 9, 2020. Rinne’s was the first in seven years.
I witnessed history when I watched this game.
- For added history, the Canucks are now tied for the most goalie goals against in NHL history. Yes, it’s only two — Evgeni Nabokov scored one against the Canucks back in 2002 — but that ties the New Jersey Devils for the most allowed. And the two against the Devils were both of the own goal variety, so not true goalie goals, which leaves the Canucks standing alone on that particular summit.
- Fun note: Nabokov’s goal from 2002 is still the only power play goalie goal in NHL history.
- The Canucks were immediately put in a tough spot in the opening minute when a deflected puck hit Ethan Bear in the face, leaving him streaming blood on the ice as he skated to the bench. He left the game and didn’t return, leaving the Canucks with five defencemen for essentially the entire game, including two defencemen in Christian Wolanin and Guillaume Brisebois who have played the majority of the season in the AHL with the Abbotsford Canucks.
- “I was proud of the guys tonight. We had five D right from the start,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “I’ve got to give a lot of kudos to [Abbotsford head coach] Jeremy Colliton down there because the guys that we’ve got called up here — Brisebois and Wolanin — they’re system guys and I think it starts from Abbotsford. Kudos to him.”
- The Bruins were all over the Canucks in the first period, out-shooting them by a stunning margin: 20-to-7. Rookie goaltender Arturs Silovs was under siege and did well to only allow two goals. After the first period, either the Canucks settled into a more-structured game or the Bruins started to coast, because the Bruins only had 15 shots on goal in the second and third periods.
- Silovs held the Bruins at bay until their first power play because the Canucks’ penalty kill remains Very Bad™. Quinn Hughes had a chance to clear the puck but could only get it to the line, where Hampus Lindholm held it in. That led to a one-timer by Lindholm, who faded away from the middle of the ice to give J.T. Miller no chance to slide across for the shot block, while Sheldon Dries was stuck in the shooting lane, screening Silovs.
- Brad Marchand, the most popular man in Vancouver, made it 2-0 with a fabulous solo effort. Jake DeBrusk chipped the puck up the boards and Marchand did the rest, cutting inside on Kyle Burroughs and shooting back against the grain on Silovs to go post and in. Marchand ought to be careful: typically when a rat goes against the grain, farmers call in their best mousers to deal with it.
- (That is a joke about grain; I am not suggesting the Canucks get a giant cat to attack Brad Marchand)
- The highlight of the game for Canucks fans was Marchand getting knocked on his keister late in the second period, only it wasn’t a Canuck that leveled him; it was referee Wes McCauley. That’s probably the biggest cheer a referee will ever get in Vancouver.
- Aatu Räty hasn’t made much of an impression in his first couple of games with the Vancouver Canucks and he’s mostly been unnoticeable. Unfortunately, he was very noticeable early in the second period when he jumped off the bench and immediately played the puck, causing a too many players on the ice penalty. Räty played just 1:50 in the second period and 8:33 in total, the fewest minutes among Canucks forwards.
- The Bruins hard-matched Elias Pettersson with the Patrice Bergeron line, which is the greatest sign of respect that they could possibly give him. The trouble is that it worked: when Bergeron was on the ice against Pettersson at 5-on-5, the Bruins out-attempted the Canucks 8-to-1, out-shot them 6-to-1, and outscored them 1-to-0.
- “Some of our top guys were a little tired, they’ve been logging a lot of ice time,” said Tocchet. You don’t say! My brother in Christ, you're the one giving them the ice time.
- Pettersson had just two shots on goal, a far cry from the ten shots he had against the Blues. That wasn’t for a lack of trying: one power play shot attempt saw his stick snap in half but he had such power on the shot that the bottom half of his stick went flying up into the seats, somersaulting seemingly as high as the scoreboard. That’s one of the more unusual souvenirs a fan will get this season.
- The Canucks threatened to come back in the third period, much like they did in their past two games, all while the fans who compulsively click the draft lottery simulator cried out in anguish. After Marchand hit the post at one end, Miller got the puck deep at the other end and forced a bad pass on the forecheck. Conor Garland picked up the loose puck and swung it towards the net, where it caromed off the side of the goal to Brock Boeser, whose quick backhand beat Ullmark to make it 2-1.
- That was as close as the Canucks would come, despite some good pressure from Pettersson’s line with Andrei Kuzmenko and Anthony Beauvillier. In the final minute, with Silovs pulled for the extra attacker, Boeser tried to deflect the puck into the corner on a dump-in but it was instead cut off by Ullmark, who ignored the one-goal score and fired the puck over the leaping Pettersson to plant the puck in the middle of the far net.
- Hughes was clearly angry about giving up a goalie goal, slamming the puck into the boards, but come on: you have to love the sheer joy with which Ullmark and his teammates celebrated that goal. It was only the ninth time in NHL history a goaltender has shot the puck into the net for a goal. That’s incredible.
- The Canucks have nothing to be ashamed of in that game. They played well, at least after the first period. “I’m really proud of this team,” said Tocchet. “I’m telling you, on the bench, some guys were tired, we had five D and we stuck with the system and the mindset. That goes a long way.”
