NHL Playoff Rarities: Hat Tricks, Goalie Goals and Stanley Cup Miscues

Every year, the playoff chase for the Stanley Cup keeps NHL fans on the edge of their seats. Every playoff year is different, and some post-seasons have seen rarities and crazy oddities before – and after – the Cup has been raised.

Here’s a look at some of the strange and unlikely things that have happened in the NHL playoffs.

There have been 86 penalty shots taken in the history of the NHL playoffs, but only 26 of them have gone in. The playoff year with the most penalty-shot goals was in 2018-19, when Toronto’s Mitch Marner scored on Boston’s Tuukka Rask, Washington’s Nic Dowd scored on Carolina’s Petr Mrazek, and St. Louis’ Vladimir Tarasenko scored on San Jose’s Martin Jones.

Ron Hextall became the first goalie to score a goal in a playoff game on April 11, 1989. The Philadelphia Flyers netminder achieved this feat with a little over a minute left to secure a victory against the Washington Capitals in Game 5 of the first round. Philadelphia won again in Game 6 and finished the series. 

This rarity happened again on April 17, 1997, when Martin Brodeur took a long shot and scored with less than a minute left as the New Jersey Devils defeated the Montreal Canadiens in Game 1 of their first-round series. New Jersey took the series in five games and moved on to the next round.

A playoff shutout is an amazing achievement, but recording at least three consecutive shutouts or at least five overall in a single post-season is exceedingly rare.

The feat of three consecutive playoff shutouts has been accomplished seven times. The first time was in 1925-26 by Clint Benedict of the Montreal Maroons. It happened again in 1928-29 by John Ross Roach of the New York Rangers and in 1944-45 by Frank McCool of the Toronto Maple Leafs. 

It took 57 years before the feat was seen again when Brent Johnson of the St. Louis Blues and Patrick Lalime of the Ottawa Senators posted three straight zeroes in 2001-02. The Anaheim Ducks did it twice in close proximity, in 2002-03 by Jean-Sebastien Giguere and 2005-06 by Ilya Bryzgalov.

The feat of at least five shutouts in a single post-season has been achieved six times. The high point occurred in 2002-03 when New Jersey’s Brodeur recorded seven goose eggs, besting the mark set by the Detroit Red Wings’ Dominik Hasek, who had six in 2001-02. 

Anaheim’s Giguere posted five shutouts in the 2002-03 post-season, as did the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Nikolai Khabibulin in 2003-04, Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy in 2020-21 and the Calgary Flames’ Miikka Kiprusoff in 2003-04.

Only Giguere accomplished three consecutive shutouts and at least five total in a playoff year. That was the 2002-03 playoffs when he had three consecutive shutouts in Round 3 against the Minnesota Wild and five overall. 

Although Anaheim didn’t win the Cup – losing to Brodeur’s Devils – Giguere was named the playoff MVP and won the Conn Smythe Trophy. That's a rarity in itself – the Conn Smythe Trophy has only been awarded to a player of the losing team five times, with Giguere being the latest to win in that fashion.

A playoff hat trick has been achieved 329 times, but there have only been 19 players to score multiple hat tricks in a single post-season. Out of these 19 players, 15 players had two hat tricks, three players had three hatties, and one player, Jari Kurri, recorded four hat tricks in a single post-season. 

And only one player – the one and only Wayne Gretzky – has scored multiple hat tricks in more than one post-season…and he did it four playoffs.

In the 1984-85 post-season, the Edmonton Oilers’ Kurri set the record with four hat tricks. Newsy Lalonde of the Montreal Canadiens became the first player with multiple hat tricks in a single post-season when he recorded three in 1918-19. This achievement wasn’t seen again until more than 60 years later when Mark Messier of the Oilers and the New York Islanders’ Mike Bossy scored three hat tricks in the 1982-83 playoffs.

Gretzky, meanwhile, recorded two hat tricks in each of the 1980-81, 1982-83, 1984-85 and 1996-97 post-seasons.

On April 1, 1919, the Montreal Canadiens and Seattle Metropolitans should have been playing the final game of the Stanley Cup series, but the league cancelled the game as a player from each team was rushed to hospital and others were ill. This happened during the Great Influenza, and many players were showing symptoms. Unfortunately, Montreals Joe Hall succumbed to the flu and passed away on April 5.

There was talk of resuming the series, but it never happened, and therefore, no winner.

There have been 15 times when a name was misspelled on the Stanley Cup. Three of the misspellings were of the team's name. For example, in 1971-72, “Boston Bruins” was misspelled when the engravers accidentally made the ‘O’s into ‘Q’s. And there have been various player names that have been misspelled. For example, from 1956 to 1960, the name of Montreal Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante was spelled differently each year.

The Stanley Cup is precious cargo, so it’s a scary thought that it could be damaged. Unfortunately, it’s happened a few times. Surprisingly, the first and only time it was damaged on the ice was last season, according to Phil Pritchard, the Hockey Hall of Fame's Keeper of the Cup. Nicolas Aube-Kubel fell on his way to take a picture with the team and ended up dropping the Cup on the ice and denting it. 

All previous damage had been done off the ice. For example, in 1962, the Toronto Maple Leafs brought the Cup to a party where it later ended up getting dropped into a bonfire.

The Stanley Cup has gotten wet by various winners. 

In 1991 and 1993, Mario Lemieux and Patrick Roy, respectively, ended up with the Cup at the bottom of their pools. In Lemieux's case, a teammate was curious to see if the Cup would float – it did not – and it didn't float in Roy’s pool, either. 

In 2002, Dominik Hasek took the Cup for a swim, holding it as he lapped across a pool. It was taken away from him shortly after.