My First NHL Goal

This is a tale from a long time ago – back around the year 2000 when I lived in San Jose with Sara, while working for several soon-to-be-extinct web companies.

Sara had started a concierge company to service startups around Silicon Valley, and part of her investment was buying season tickets to the San Jose Sharks NHL hockey team. We were already fans, so when she couldn’t use the season tickets for clients we got the chance to go and enjoy the games.

It was the first time for me to have a season ticket to any sports team, so it was a completely new experience. We saw the same people at the games, had access to special lounges, and one perk was that season ticket holders were tapped to volunteer at team promotional events, which brings me to today’s topic.

Every year the Sharks held a fan thank you event in their arena. The fans pay some fee and they come in and have a chance to join a long queue and meet their favorite players. There were some other attractions and drawings, and volunteers from among the season ticket holders were pressed into service to help out. Sara and I were happy to volunteer.

On the day of the event we arrived and were assigned In the morning to help manage the meet-and-greet autograph lines. My job was to stand next to some of the players sitting at a table and watch the fans to make sure that they didn’t wear out their welcome. The idea was that the line had to keep moving at a certain pace, so I would be the bad guy to ask people to wrap it up and move along. As a fan you’d hate to have the player you idolize tell you, “Great, now can you leave, please?” That job was left to the anonymous volunteer who had very little at stake. It was a really good idea. The players understood the arrangement and would give me a glance or a wink when they wanted me to move in, and surprisingly the fans took my hints quickly and moved on. Easy job, and it was fun to stand next to the players and overhear their side conversations.

In the afternoon after a lunch break the organizers mixed up the assignments, and I was sent onto the ice of the arena, to handle a booth set up so that fans could pay for the opportunity to take a shot on a real NHL goalie. My job was to take the tickets from the fans, set up the shot, and make sure the goalie had everything he needed.

The goalie I worked with was my favorite: Steve Shields (what a great name for a goalie!) At that time he was the backup goalie for the Sharks, and I liked him because he had recently been acquired from my other favorite team, the Buffalo Sabres. I was awestruck when he skated out and started to do warmup stretches in full gear in front of the net a couple feet away from me. Nobody else was on the ice but me and him.

There is something about standing next to an actual living, breathing professional athlete in the context of where they work. It seemed like he was a 3D person in a 2D world. It wasn’t just that he was on skates and wearing bulky pads that made Steve Shields seem larger – there is a self-confidence and professional aura that sports players, celebrities, and movie stars have, especially when doing what they are professionally paid to do.

A little nervously I went up and introduced myself and explained my function in this event. He answered in grunts that may have been from his stretches rather than any form of communication, but I figured this wasn’t the start of a deep relationship and I went back to my position to wait for the gates to open and more importantly stay out of his way.

Once the fans started streaming in, people quickly made their way down to the ice. Some had paid extra to shoot on goal, most were there just to be close to the Shark’s goalie. A large group of people gathered to watch, and I noticed there was a large part of the audience made up of beautiful young women, ooh-ing and aah-ing. Some of these ladies gave me things, which surprised me until they indicated that they wanted me to pass the presents on to Steve Shields, who accepted the gifts wordlessly and made a little pile behind the net. This was before selfies and smartphones but I don’t remember many people taking pictures at the event.

I set up the puck, gave a borrowed hockey stick to the eager fan in exchange for their ticket, and then they usually said something quickly to Steve before taking a whack at the puck. The goalie usually just nodded at whatever they said, easily blocked their shot, and tapped the puck back over to me – all in one smooth economic motion designed to ensure he didn’t injure himself outside of a real game.

In contrast to the other players that I had stood next to in the morning Shields was not very friendly. He didn’t talk to any fans, he didn’t really talk to me, and I got the vibe that he was stuck doing this event against his will. He blocked every shot taken on him, except for when little kids came up and then he did his best to let the shot trickle into the net. He may not have been happy to be there, but he did everything that he was supposed to do, and the fans kept lining up, and before I knew it the event was over.

As the last fans were ushered away by security, I realized that this was as close as I’d ever get in my life to shooting on a professional goalie. Steve was still in the net doing post-exercise stretches, and I was standing right there. I had the borrowed stick in one hand, and the puck and a handful of tickets in the other. So I did what seemed natural to me – I dropped the puck in front of me, put the stick on the ice, and flicked the puck over Steve Shield’s left shoulder and into the net.

Steve Shields looked up from his stretches, the puck already past him, and suddenly sprang to a standing position, facing me. He looked straight at me with that scary painted hockey mask. I didn’t move. Slowly he shook his head and without looking reached back behind him with his goalkeeper stick, retrieved the puck, and sent it out of the net (and away from me).

There was an awkward silence as he stood there facing me, in full uniform, while I stood there looking back (probably with my mouth hanging open) wondering if I had pissed him off.

But then he skated towards me, tapped the side of my leg with his stick, and said “Thanks” before skating off towards the dressing room.

I learned that day that goalies (at least the ones that I have worked with) are extremely serious about protecting the goal, even when they aren’t in a game and that maybe I had broken an unwritten hockey rule.

So that was how I scored a goal on a (unaware) NHL goalie, learned a little lesson on the rules of fair play, and had a glimpse of the parts of a pro athlete’s life that you rarely get to see.

But I can truthfully say that still, to this day, no NHL goalie has managed to block a shot by me. I think it’ll probably stay that way.