I’ve always been fascinated by bad goals. You know the kind – the ones where the puck goes in, you immediately start swearing at your TV either out of frustration or amazement, and we get an extended zoom-in on the goaltender while his teammates all turn and skate away in disgust without even acknowledging he exists.
Bad goals have always been a part of hockey, but if anything they’ve become even more interesting over the course of the Dead Puck era. An entire generation of defense-first coaches have worked to squeeze the offense out of the sport, desperately trying to turn every game into a 2-1 slog of blocked shots and neutral zone turnovers.