The Art of the Penalty Shot

Originally published in Rinkside in 2004

By Lucas Aykroyd

It’s often called “the most exciting play in hockey,” but a penalty shot is also one of the most nerve-wracking for shooters and goalies. In the normal course of a game, there are dozens of possibilities developing on the ice, and there’s a give-and-take to the action. But now, it comes down to a goal or no goal, nothing more and nothing less.

Every fan in the arena is standing, focusing on just two players, starting to cheer in anticipation as the puck is carried from center ice toward the net. At this point, both the shooter and the goalie could be forgiven for wondering: “How did we end up here?”

“Oh, that’s easy!” you might reply. “Someone got hauled down on a clear breakaway and the referee had to call it.” But in fact, the 2003-04 NHL Rulebook describes nine different rule infractions where a penalty shot can be awarded.

Generally, the player who has been fouled is the one who takes the shot. This includes the aforementioned “fouling from behind,” as well as cases where the breakaway puck-carrier has been interfered with by a thrown stick or other object, or by a player entering the game illegally. Also, if the goalie deliberately displaces the net on a breakaway, it’s a penalty shot for the puck-carrier.

Sometimes a team gets to pick its shooter from among the players on the ice at the time the penalty shot is awarded. Usually, this occurs when a defending skater in the goal crease either covers up the puck or picks it up with his hand.

The Rulebook also has stipulations about what not to do during a penalty shot. These are included for good reason, but since you almost never see such things happening, it makes for humorous reading if you use your imagination.

“Hey, goalie! Shouldn’t have left your crease before the shooter touched the puck. Now the referee will have the guy take a second shot if he misses the first time. Nice going! And what about the genius on the opposing bench who managed to distract the shooter skating in? That’s a misconduct, buddy, plus a do-over for the shot. Oh, and how dumb is it to get caught trying to take a penalty shot with an illegal stick? No penalty shot for you, banana blade boy, and two minutes in the box!”

Even disregarding obvious brain cramps like those, penalty shots are primarily a mental challenge. Just ask Brett Hull. He’s the NHL’s third all-time leading goal-scorer, and he once described himself as “the smartest man in hockey.” Yet the Detroit ace has never fared well in these one-on-one confrontations. His career penalty shot record fell to 0-for-5 when he lost the puck while trying to deke Washington’s Olaf Kolzig on December 13, 2003. Hull admitted afterwards that he’d lost the mental battle: “I could have dumped it in the stands. [Kolzig] knew what I was doing before I knew what I was doing.”

In some cases, penalty shots just aren’t a certain player’s style. “Brett is more of an off-the-pass, in-traffic kind of guy,” said former Dallas teammate Mike Modano. “He’ll tell you that he’s not the perfect breakaway guy.”

Modano has his own thoughts about the classic dilemma of whether to shoot or deke: “I think there are only one or two options when you’re coming down. If the goalie comes out, you want to deke. If he plays back in, you’re looking to shoot. You’ve got to make those decisions really quickly. Some guys have a patented move that they like to stick to, where no matter what, they feel confident they can make it.”

But even your best move isn’t guaranteed to work, as Tampa Bay Lightning sniper Vincent Lecavalier vividly recalls from his first NHL penalty shot in 2001 against Curtis Joseph: “I wanted to do my ‘junior move,’ the old triple fake. I tried to go to my backhand and come back on my forehand, but I missed it coming back on my forehand. I didn’t get a shot on net. Maybe I could have had him, but I didn’t.”

With years of experience playing in the South, where optimal ice conditions are harder to maintain due to the heat, both Modano and Lecavalier agree that the time of the game and the time remaining in the period can influence the shooter’s approach. “If you get a chance to take a penalty shot early on, you may feel a little more confident about trying to make a move,” said Modano. “But if the ice gets a little snowy, I think you’ve just got to get down there and get a shot off and force the goalie to make a save.”

If you sense a note of frustration in these comments from offensive players, you’re probably bang on. Most shooters simply want to avoid embarrassing themselves. “Penalty shots, I find, are a lot of pressure,” said Calgary’s Jarome Iginla. “Sometimes you just have too many thoughts going through your mind.”

Even players who have gotten their share of penalty shot goals, like Joe Sakic and Markus Naslund, don’t have any glib answers about the secrets of their success. To put a twist on Yoda’s line in The Empire Strikes Back: “Score, or score not. There is no try.” Historically, shooters score less than 40 percent of the time.

“I think the goalie always has the advantage,” said Dallas netminder Marty Turco. “You’re reading and reacting to the shooters. It’s easier for the shooter to make a mistake. The onus is definitely on them.”

In his 1988 book Fuhr on Goaltending, five-time Stanley Cup champion Grant Fuhr emphasizes arguably the most important tenet for any goalie aiming to stop a penalty shot: “Just by standing there, you will force the shooter to make the first move. If he makes the first move, he is at your mercy. It takes nerves of steel, and most times you feel you are making a mistake by not anticipating his move and going first, but if you go first, the puck will be in the net. You must force the shooter to make the first move.”

“I don’t think it’s very smart to go out and try a pokecheck, because the guys are so skillful in this league,” affirmed Atlanta goalie Pasi Nurminen. “Probably if you try that, they’ll just deke past you and put the puck in.”

Nurminen enjoys working on penalty shots in practice against two of the NHL’s best young snipers, Ilya Kovalchuk and Dany Heatley: “We’ve got good one-on-one battles going all the time. It’s fun facing guys like Ilya and Dany. Sometimes it’s hard to stop Ilya. Time after time he comes in and scores! Dany’s the opposite way. Sometimes he can’t score on me at all. If he scores, I get a little bit ticked off, and if he can’t score, he gets ticked off. That keeps it interesting.”

Penalty shots have been an interesting part of NHL hockey for a long time. To put it in perspective, the NHL first instituted them the same month as the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations and Babe Ruth played his last game as a New York Yankee. But the new rule in September 1934 created a different penalty shot scenario from today. The shot had to be taken from within a 10-foot circle 38 feet out from the goaltender.

Armand Mondou of the Montreal Canadiens took the first penalty shot in League history on November 10, 1934, but was stymied by Toronto’s George Hainsworth. Three days later, Ralph Bowman of the St. Louis Eagles inscribed his name in the history books by scoring on Alex Connell of the Montreal Maroons. It was also Bowman’s first career NHL goal, a feat later duplicated by Philadelphia’s Ilkka Sinisalo (1981) and Washington’s Reggie Savage (1992).

Detroit’s Ebbie Goodfellow, the 1940 Hart Trophy winner, got a record-setting ten penalty shots during his career, but he only scored twice. Eventually the NHL elected to change penalty shots to the contemporary breakaway format. But you rarely saw the referee pointing to center ice for this thrilling play in the mid-20th century. According to The Unofficial Guide to Hockey’s Most Unusual Records by Don Weekes and Kerry Banks, 770 penalty shots were called between 1934-35 and 2001-02. But according to Weekes’s Puck-Stoppin’ Trivia, 346 of those occurred from 1983-84 to 1997-98 alone.

Old-school referees were especially averse to calling penalty shots in the playoffs. Only two took place in the 1930’s, one in the 40’s, and none at all in the 50’s. On April 9, 1968, Wayne Connelly finally broke the post-season goose egg by outdueling L.A.’s Terry Sawchuk in a 7-5 victory for his Minnesota North Stars.

Regular season history was made on February 11, 1982 when referee Kerry Fraser awarded the Vancouver Canucks two penalty shots in the third period of a game in Detroit. For the Canucks, it didn’t hurt that their two shooters boasted the best finesse skills on the team. Thomas Gradin and Ivan Hlinka both scored on Gilles Gilbert as Vancouver came back for a 4-4 tie. (Detroit wasn’t thrilled with the calls, as Reed Larson hurled a water bottle at Fraser following Hlinka’s goal, and afterwards the referee had to head back to his hotel with a police escort warding off irate fans.)

Incidentally, the League’s all-time leader in regular season penalty shot goals is also a forward who had his finest NHL years with Vancouver. From 1991-92 to 2002-03, Pavel Bure accomplished the feat seven times. Renowned for his electrifying breakaway speed, the “Russian Rocket” also holds the single-season record from his last campaign with Vancouver (1997-98), when he tallied three penalty shot goals against San Jose’s Mike Vernon, Phoenix’s Nikolai Khabibulin, and Ottawa’s Damian Rhodes.

Bure was involved in arguably the most significant and memorable penalty shot in Stanley Cup playoff history. On June 7, 1994 he went head-to-head with Mike Richter of the New York Rangers in Game Four of the Finals. A goal would have given Vancouver a 3-1 lead and boosted its chances of knotting the series at two games apiece. However, Richter stretched out his right pad with incredible flexibility and denied Bure as the forward tried to tuck in the puck on his forehand. The Rangers went on to win the Cup.

For many observers, the marvelous Mario Lemieux would probably be the safest bet if you could pick just one shooter in this situation. Lemieux has scored on six of eight career penalty shots, denied only by Bill Ranford and Dominik Hasek. Then again, a legitimate argument could be made for Joe Sakic, whose lethal wrister has made him a perfect 4-for-4 counting both regular season and playoff action.

Meanwhile, Ranford would have to be the choice among goaltenders. The 1990 Conn Smythe Trophy winner stopped nine of the 11 career penalty shots he faced, although Rogie Vachon and Chico Resch might claim they outdid him, as both netminders had unblemished 6-for-6 records.

International hockey has provided another venue for NHL stars to shine in penalty shot situations, especially since the International Ice Hockey Federation introduced the shootout as a tie-breaking formula in 1992. Again, Ranford springs to mind. When regulation play and overtime failed to break a 1-1 deadlock between Canada and Finland at the 1994 IIHF World Championships, it was Ranford’s clutch save on Mika Nieminen in the shootout that gave the Maple Leaf its first gold at the tournament since 1961.

“When Luc Robitaille scored the goal that put us ahead and their guy was getting ready to skate in on me, I stood there realizing that, well, here it is,” Ranford recalled. “It’s down to this and you’ve got to make the save. Fortunately, I did.”

Hasek took a similar mentality into the 1998 Winter Olympics, regarded by many as his greatest single performance. In the Czech Republic-Canada semi-finals, he stoned Theoren Fleury, Ray Bourque, Joe Nieuwendyk, Eric Lindros, and Brendan Shanahan in the climactic shootout. Shot or deke, it didn’t matter. Hasek’s unorthodox genius awed his Czech teammates. “At the Olympics, I’d practice taking penalty shots on him every day,” said Martin Rucinsky. “I couldn’t beat him. Usually in that kind of situation, I’d be able to score about 50 percent of the time. Against him, not once. He has no weaknesses.”

The most famous shootout goal in Olympic history belongs to Peter Forsberg. In 1994, his spectacular one-handed tally against Canada’s Corey Hirsch earned Sweden its first-ever Olympic gold after Paul Kariya was unable to score on Tommy Salo. The Swedish government honored the future Hart Trophy winner and NHL scoring champion by immortalizing his feat on a postage stamp.

Some lesser-known names have also done amazing things on penalty shots in international play. One example was the semi-final matchup between Russia and Finland at the 2002 IIHF World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden. When the game went to a shootout, Andrei Kovalenko and Valeri Karpov stepped up for Russia. The two ex-NHLers outwitted Finnish goalie Jussi Markkanen with some of the most intricate fakes imaginable, giving the Russians a 3-2 win and enabling them to go on to the silver medal.

Back in North America, penalty shots may continue to take on greater significance. When NHL general managers met in Las Vegas in February, they agreed to let referees call a penalty shot in cases where a player clearly would have had a breakaway despite not yet touching the puck. Former NHL great Denis Potvin recently floated the notion of allowing clubs to choose a penalty shot instead of a power play in certain situations.

There’s also speculation about the possibility of using shootouts to decide regular season games after five minutes of overtime. Although that’s up in the air, players such as Lecavalier, Iginla, and Kovalchuk favor the idea. “I think it’s good for everybody,” said Kovalchuk. “For the fans it’s very exciting.”

Excitement is what NHL hockey is all about. So in one form or another, fans will continue to thrill to the art of the penalty shot for years to come.

Penalty Shot Names and Numbers

Youngest player to score on a penalty shot: Florida’s Nathan Horton (18 years, 224 days) on Philadelphia’s Jeff Hackett on January 8, 2004

Overtime penalty shot goals: Nashville’s David Legwand (Dec. 23, 2000), Philadelphia’s Michael Handzus (Dec. 6, 2002), Colorado’s Milan Hejduk (Jan. 19, 2004)

Most penalty shots faced by a goalie, one season: 5, Toronto’s Curtis Joseph (4 saves, 2001-02) and Nashville’s Tomas Vokoun (3 saves, 2002-03)

Most penalty shots faced by a goalie, regular season career: 13, Kelly Hrudey (1984-1998), 7 goals, 6 saves

Most penalty shots faced by a goalie, playoff career: 5, Dominik Hasek (4 saves, 1 goal)