Can a Goalie Score a Goal? Here’s Every One in Hockey History
Every goalie has pictured it. Puck on the stick, empty net 180 feet away, one clean look at history. It almost never happens — which is exactly why it’s the most electric play a goaltender can make.
So we set out to catalogue every single one, at every level of the game. (Plenty of goalies are rooting for us — Dallas Stars netminder Jake Oettinger, asked what he’d add to the goalie world, didn’t hesitate.)
“Can I vote for a 200-foot-long shooting room so that we can practice goalie goals?”
— Jake Oettinger, Dallas Stars (InGoal Radio)
Goalie Goals is our growing, fully verified database of goals scored by goaltenders — sorted by league, with video where it exists. We’re at 220 goalie goals from 195 different netminders across 18 leagues and levels so far, and counting: the NHL, AHL, ECHL, major junior, NCAA, European pro, women’s hockey, and on down. The NHL and ECHL lists are complete and cross-checked; the rest are filling in fast — and that’s where we need your help (more on that below).
Building it, we kept running into facts we had to read twice. We’re not going to spoil them here — but here’s a taste of what’s waiting on the page:
- Two goalies share the all-time record with four goalie goals apiece — and neither did it in just one league. One scored across three different pro leagues; the other across four different levels of his career. That range is the whole reason this list runs so deep. Can you name either of them?
- A future two-time Stanley Cup champion scored in two different leagues in a single season — years before he ever lifted a Cup.
- One goaltender scored a goal and posted a shutout in the same night. A different one fired it the length of the ice — then got ejected minutes later.
- A teenage junior goalie just became the first in his league’s history to score twice.
- The first goalie to truly shoot and score did it the way every goalie dreams — gloving down a dump-in and rifling it the length of the ice into the empty net.
- The first goal ever scored by a goaltender in pro hockey came from a netminder who was also the first goalie ever taken first overall in the NHL Draft.
- One goalie has scored on another goalie. Once. Ever. That same netminder holds two more records nobody else touches.
- There are goalie goals here from the KHL, the WHL, college rinks, and women’s hockey — including a first that may have been the first of its kind anywhere.
Curious who? See every goalie goal in hockey history →
Why are we suddenly seeing so many?
Goalie goals are arriving in bunches — the NHL just had three straight seasons with a goalie shooting one into an empty net, something that had never happened before. Part of it is simply that goalies are better puck-handlers than ever. As Devils veteran Jake Allen told InGoal:
“Everyone can fire it nowadays with the technology. It doesn’t need to be a million miles an hour, it’s just got to be high and accurate.”
— Jake Allen, New Jersey Devils
And part of it is just seizing the moment. Alex Nedeljkovic — one of only two netminders with four goalie goals, and the only one to score in the NHL, the AHL, and the ECHL — still remembers his very first, in just his second pro game:
“They had just scored, and they dumped the puck in right at me. I just kinda dropped it and shot it… and then I looked up, and I’m like, ‘oh, this is going in.’”
— Alex Nedeljkovic, on his first goalie goal (InGoal Radio)
Why are we seeing it more and more? InGoal’s Kevin Woodley dug into exactly that with Allen and Nedeljkovic — the technique, the mindset, and the one thing every recent goalie goal had in common. Read Kevin’s full breakdown →
Help us find the ones we’re missing
We know we haven’t found them all — especially in junior, college, European, women’s, and minor hockey. If you know of a goalie goal we’re missing, at any level, from the pros all the way to your kid’s rep team, there’s a form right on the Goalie Goals page. Send us the details and a video link, and we’ll verify it and add it. Let’s build the most complete record of goalie goals anywhere — together.