We’ve seen NHL teams score on themselves before, but never like what we saw in the Arizona Coyotes/Carolina Hurricanes game on Thursday night.
As the Arizona Coyotes and Carolina Hurricanes faced off, both teams had noticed that the puck had gone missing. Then things got bizarre.
Just after Carolina had taken a 2-0 lead over the struggling Coyotes, Arizona’s dumped the puck in the Hurricanes. The problem here is that the puck was nowhere to be found.
You can see Hurricane’s goaltender Cam Ward go out and play the puck and then go back in the crease. Shortly thereafter, Ward found the puck, in between his skate and his pad. The problem for Ward and Carolina is that both of his skates had completely crossed the goal line.
The referees would review the play and try to determine if Ward had scored on himself. In order for a goal to be awarded, the puck has to completely go across the goal line. In this case, it did as the area where the skate and the pad meet went over the goal line. But the real question here is why didn’t the referee blow the whistle? Clearly he lost sight of the puck, but either way, the goal still counted, just NHL officiating at its finest.
We’ve seen teams score on themselves plenty of times in different ways. How many times have we seen the New York Rangers deflect a puck off their skate or body past Henrik Lundqvist? But a goal being scored like this? I don’t think we have ever seen anything like this before.
The goal would go on to be credited to Alex Goligoski for his 10th goal this season. It’s probably the easiest goal that he will ever score in his career as all he had to do was get a fortunate bounce.
The lesson here for young goaltenders is simple. Never let your skate cross the goal line because you never, the puck might be stuck in your pads. This is something that 13-year veteran Cam Ward forgot and now his team’s is gone with Arizona and Carolina tied in the second period.
