Six conspiracy theories to explain the strangest goal of 2022-23

Claude Giroux finally did it. Thursday night, after playing more than 1,000 NHL games, the Ottawa Senators forward scored on a bouncing junk shot from center ice.

Early in the first period with his team trailing the Vegas Golden Knights 1-0, Giroux threw a wobbly dump-in towards the Golden Knights net. The puck took a crazy hop and beat Vegas goaltender Logan Thompson high glove side.

Claude Giroux did WHAT? pic.twitter.com/BkReVxkbqI

— ESPN+ (@ESPNPlus) November 3, 2022

The best part? Giroux claims it wasn’t a fluke. “I’ve probably tried that over 500 times in my career and it never went in,” Giroux explained after the game. “When it went in, it was overdue. I get pretty excited when I see a goal like that.”

Me too. Giroux and I were Philadelphia Flyers teammates for a portion of the 2018-19 season. So I’ve seen him try it in a game. And faced the shot in practice.

Truth be told, it always made me giggle. Not many players purposely throw pucks at the net from the red line with intentions of scoring. And even less actually score that way. I found it funny that Giroux continued to try despite the long odds.

I can tell you first hand, there isn’t much Thompson can do to stop Giroux’s shot. A puck typically does not bounce three feet in the air when it hits the ice. Thompson is guarding the lower half of the net, where 999 times out of 1,000 the puck will go.

What makes Giroux’s fluttering attempt even more difficult for Thompson to save is that it’s so rare. Goaltenders see hundreds of shots a day in practice. But they’re almost all from inside the blueline. And none are bouncing.

I’ve probably watched the clip a hundred times. And what really gets me is that the puck bounces higher than it ever was coming off of Giroux’s stick. How can I explain the unexplainable? What could have possibly caused this sorcery?

I have a few ideas. And they could all be wrong. But here they are:

AIR CURRENTS

During the late-90s, several Mercedes prototype race cars took flight at LeMans when air got underneath the bodywork.

1999 #LeMans when Peter Dumbreck went airborne in the Mercedes CLR 😯#MercedesMonday pic.twitter.com/6KBKOF9zQY

— Earl Karanja (@Earlsimxx) August 1, 2016

I’ve seen this phenomenon happen with pucks before. The leading edge gets some lift, and the next thing you know the entire disk is floating upward. But Giroux’s goal was a bounce. The puck didn’t start its path toward the net along the ice. So I think we can shelve this theory.

BAD ICE

Thursday’s game took place at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa. And having been on that ice quite often myself, I can confirm it’s not the best in the NHL. But every slab is susceptible to developing ruts. Maybe the front edge of the puck hit a gash in the ice and dug in, causing Giroux’s shot to unexpectedly flutter skyward. Seems plausible.

UNEXPECTED MAGNETISM

With all the new technology in NHL arenas, who’s to say something weird isn’t going on? The league has been toying with pucks that have embedded trackers. And what about those digitally enhanced dasher boards? I don’t trust ’em. Maybe some kind of wacky forcefield was inadvertently created. Sketchy sounding, I know. But it’s 2022.

CHEM TRAILS

If governments are supposedly trying to change weather patterns and gain mind control by dropping chemicals out of planes, why not add flying pucks to the list? Seems real enough to me. Especially in Canada. There is nothing more important in Canada than the success of Canadian hockey teams. I can only imagine what those toxic chemicals can do to a piece of vulcanized rubber. If the government can control your mind, surely there’s a way to alter a puck’s flight path. Right?

LACK OF SPIN

Watch Giroux release the shot. There’s clear intent on his part not to keep the puck flat. Giroux isn’t trying to saucer a flat pass towards Thompson. Giroux is trying to create chaos by sending a wobbling puck on goal. And Giroux accomplishes that by taking spin off the puck. He’s flipping the puck just as much as he’s shooting it. Without spin, a puck flutters. And that increases the chance of something strange happening when it lands. Lack of spin might be the answer.

ALIENS

When nothing else makes sense, the safe bet is always on little green people from outer space. There are fields near the Canadian Tire Centre: a classic place to land a spacecraft. And aliens probably have the ability to shift the flight path of airborne objects in ways that earth-based physics can’t understand. But there weren’t any UFO sightings Thursday in Ottawa that I can find.

Alien intervention seems a little far-fetched at this point. So I’m going to say that Giroux’s goal was a combination of bad ice and a lack of spin on the puck.

No doubt Giroux’s intentionally wobbly release provided the catalyst for what happened. But something had to happen at the hash marks for the puck to bounce like it did. There had to be a rut in the ice that caught the front edge of the puck and sent it towards the upper third of the net.

For a goaltender, it’s such a hollow feeling to allow a goal like Giroux’s. I allowed one that was very similar midway through my pro career. And I spent days trying to figure out what I could have done differently to stop the shot.

Finally I had to let it go. I realized that the only way to stop every dump-in like Giroux’s would be to attack the puck and make the save on the short-hop. Like an infielder in baseball. And that’s not realistic given how fast the play develops in hockey. And how exposed I would have been on any rebound.

Giroux tallied again in the second period. Thompson made 42 saves. And the Golden Knights went on to win 5-4. But I’ll always remember Thursday night’s game for the crazy bounce on Giroux’s first goal.