20 year old Evgeny Svechnikov will likely be an obscure NHL trivia answer in the future. The question:
Which player scored a game-winning goal <i>before</i> scoring his first official goal?
How does that happen? In a weird, wild shootout.
Svechnikov got called up to play in his first NHL game for the Detroit Red Wings to fill in for a player with the flu. The game ended up in a tie. OT didn't resolve it, so it went to a shootout. Current shootout rules allow 3 players to shoot for each team. If the score is still tied after those 3, both teams send a player to take an additional shot until the tie is broken.
Both goalies were playing well, and no goals were scored after the standard 3 shooters. Then 4 shooters. Then 5, and 6. For his 7th shooter, the Detroit coach elected to give the new kid a chance. Svechnikov scored a beauty, and the opposing Ottawa Senators failed to score on their following final attempt.
Svechnikov scored the game-winning goal (technically the "game-deciding goal"), but goals scored in a shootout don't count in terms of a player's personal records -- they are credited to the team as a whole. So, he will go down in history as the first player to score a game-winning goal in the NHL before officially scoring any goals. Hard to watch without bringing a big smile to your face and feeling good for the kid -- bet his 1st official goal that really does count won't be far behind.
For full story:
http://www.mlive.com/redwings/index.ssf/2017/04/evgeny_svechnikov_pulls_off_ra.html
6 Comments
Fairbssays...I tried to track down a Wings game summary video last night after getting home from a different hockey game; too many barley pops to seal the deal so thanks Milkman Dan for posting this and thanks for detailing the significance; I'd just heard young Russian scores shootout gamewinner and had visions of Datsyuk v2.0 even though that it will likely not work out as well for Evgeny; a boy can dream though...
MilkmanDansays...It almost pained me to sift it, because I'm an Avs fan and the old rivalry is still there for me a little bit.
But this transcended my bias on that pretty easily. Young kid, hero in his first NHL callup, Russian connection like so many of your team's greats (Fedorov and the all-Russian line were killer back in the peak days of Wings/Avs rivalry), happening in one of the final days at the Joe, plus this weird statistical quirk added in -- enough to make me jump up and be a Wings fan when I saw it!
Here's hoping that both of our teams pull off rebuilds ASAP and stop being cellar-dwellers. Young kids like this are probably key to that!
I tried to track down a Wings game summary video last night after getting home from a different hockey game; too many barley pops to seal the deal so thanks Milkman Dan for posting this and thanks for detailing the significance; I'd just heard young Russian scores shootout gamewinner and had visions of Datsyuk v2.0 even though that it will likely not work out as well for Evgeny; a boy can dream though...
KrazyKat42says...Invoke Happy?
MilkmanDansays...Good thinking.
*happy
##EDIT##
Oh yeah. Oops.
Invoke Happy?
siftbotInvocations (happy) cannot be called by MilkmanDan because MilkmanDan is not privileged - sorry.
Fairbssays...I'm pretty much over the rivalry now too, but I sure do remember how much I hated those dirty Avs back then.
8 of the 9 years from 95 to 2003, the Cup winner was Detroit, Colorado, or Jersey. It also seemed like whoever won the Wings / Avs series in the playoffs was going to go on to win the Cup. Man that was a crazy rivalry.
Good luck to your Team on the rebuild too. I have a buddy who is an Avs fan and some of their moves in recent years have seemed puzzling to me like getting rid of Statsny and Reilly.
It almost pained me to sift it, because I'm an Avs fan and the old rivalry is still there for me a little bit.
But this transcended my bias on that pretty easily. Young kid, hero in his first NHL callup, Russian connection like so many of your team's greats (Fedorov and the all-Russian line were killer back in the peak days of Wings/Avs rivalry), happening in one of the final days at the Joe, plus this weird statistical quirk added in -- enough to make me jump up and be a Wings fan when I saw it!
Here's hoping that both of our teams pull off rebuilds ASAP and stop being cellar-dwellers. Young kids like this are probably key to that!
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