Translated material
Attacking goalkeeper
The match turned out to be completely unconventional. Having missed more than a month and a half due to injury, Czech forward Martin Gavlat (during the lockout of the 2004/05 season, he unsuccessfully played for the capital's Dynamo) celebrated his return with a goal in the 43rd second of the match. At the beginning of the second period, the situation repeated itself - the Czech, already in the first shift, when the stopwatch counted only 12 seconds, again upset the Tampa goalkeeper.
As for Khabibullin, he reliably defended his goal and missed the only goal when his team played with a numerical minority in the third 20 minutes. Regarding Nikolai’s success in creating attacks, it can be noted that in both episodes preceding the goal, he gave the puck to Patrick Kane, and he already addressed the rubber disc to goal scorers Patrick Sharpe and Jonathan Toews.
With the NHL's assist scoring methodology, goalie assists are not recorded very rarely. For example, Khabibullin accumulated 16 assists during his career in the overseas league. But when a goalkeeper assists his teammates twice in a game, these are exceptional cases.
The best goalkeeper with a penchant for attacking actions in the history of the NHL should, of course, be considered Ron Hakstall, who faithfully served Philadelphia for many years (1986-1999 with a short break). He is the only goalkeeper in the league who managed to score two goals (this happened in the late 1980s, and in the second case Haxtall scored in a playoff match). Our Evgeniy Nabokov (San Jose) also scored one goal in the 2001/02 season. Of the scoring feats of Russian goalkeepers, perhaps, one can only remember Anton Khudobin’s goal at the 2004 World Junior Championships - then the Finnish national team hockey players suffered, replacing their goalkeeper with an extra field player.
Among the other events of the game day, the end of the scoring streak of Washington forward Alexander Ovechkin should be highlighted. In his previous nine games, he never left the court without scoring. To determine the winner in the meeting between the Capitals and Florida, it took 22 post-game free throws until luck finally smiled on the Panthers.
Results. "Buffalo" - "St. Louis" - 3:4, "New Jersey" - "Dallas" - 4:2, "Islanders" - "Ottawa" - 3:2 (bulls.), “Washington” – “Florida” - 1:2 (bullet), “Carolina” – “Philadelphia” – 1:3, “Minnesota” – “Phoenix” – 3:1, “Chicago” – Tampa Bay - 5:1, San Jose - Los Angeles - 2:3 (bullet), Colorado - Edmonton - 4:2.