The Empty Netter That Didn’t End the Game
A lost story from hockey’s mythical past
I spent last Friday night watching the Columbus Blue Jackets defeat the Tampa Bay Lighting in an ice hockey game. I know, my life is very exciting. The point is late in the 3rd period the Bolts were trailing by one and decided to pull their goalie in the hopes of getting an equalizer. It didn’t work and Boone Jenner slid the puck into the empty net making the score 3–1. As soon as that happened the game felt completely over, the reactions by both the announcers and the Twitter community would make you think that the Blue Jackets had just sealed their victory. In this case that was exactly the case as nothing particularity interesting happened in the 1:05 remaining and 3–1 would be the final score, but it got me thinking if there had ever been a game where the impossible had happened and a team came back after giving up an empty netter, I took to the internet to find out.
Going into this I knew it would be hard to research, but it was even more difficult than I had expected. It seems that no one has been keeping an easily reference-able list of empty net goals and the outcomes just in case some nerd had a weird question one day. Unbelievable, right? Eventually I did find a reference, in a dark cob-webbed corner of the internet, of a game from all the way back in 1982.
We are in the Los Angeles Forum, January 27th 1982. In a few months the Kings will defeat Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers in perhaps the greatest playoff upset of all time, but tonight the Philadelphia Flyers are in town. Probably due, at least in part, to their ridiculous Cooperall uniforms, which won’t be banned for another two seasons, the Flyers are not particularly good this season. They’ll finish 3rd in their division and be knocked out of the playoffs without winning a series for the first time in 9 years. Nonetheless on the night in question the Broad Street Bullies had the upper hand as, with 7 minutes remaining, Right Winger Reggie Leach put them ahead 3–2. Fast forward 6 minutes and the Kings pull their goalie Mario Lessard, only to see Flyer Ray Allison slide the puck into the empty net, 4–2 Flyers with 1:03 left. It must have seemed like the end of the game, if there was twitter we’d probably have evidence of fans acting as such. Nonetheless Kings Marcel Dionne and Larry Murphy would both score tying the game 4–4. Since this took place in 1982 and there was no overtime, a 4–4 tie is how the game ended.
You might be thinking it was Steve Mason in net for the Flyers, but it wasn’t. In fact the orange clad goalie that night was a man named Rick St. Croix who retired with a career GAA of 3.23 (3.89 during the season in question) and Save% of .841 (a stat that was only tracked for the final two seasons of his career). Another fun fact about this particular game is that it was one of the first that Hall of Famer Daryl Sittler played for a team that wasn’t the Maple Leafs. The legend contributed a goal in the first period, desperately trying to ward off his slow decline into retirement.
It really is a shame that this happened so long ago, I couldn’t find any video of the game, nor much mention of it anywhere. The research in this post comes largely from a site dedicated to preserving Philadelphia Flyers history, and no special to-do is made about this game in particular. Maybe I’m crazy and it isn’t actually interesting, but a game where a team came back from giving up an empty net goal seems like a story worth hearing more about.
