Ron Hextall’s First Goal Began With a Shot He Didn’t Take

The first time Ron Hextall had a chance to shoot at Boston’s empty net, he cleared the puck instead.

That choice is easy to lose in the retelling of what happened on December 8, 1987. The enduring image is the Philadelphia Flyers goaltender sending the puck the length of the Spectrum ice and into the Bruins’ goal. But Hextall’s first decision tells us almost as much about the moment as his second. A goaltender handling the puck in his own end could not treat every opening as permission to try something extraordinary. He had to judge whether the shot was there.

Boston had pulled Réjean Lemelin for an extra attacker, trying to erase a 4–2 Philadelphia lead late in the third period. After one Bruins dump-in, Hextall moved the puck out without attempting to score. When the opportunity returned, he had room to take a shot. He lifted the puck over the players between him and the far end of the rink. It landed around the Boston blue line, slid toward the vacant net and struck the right post on its way in.

The NHL records the goal at 18:48. It made the final score Flyers 5, Bruins 2. It did not put Philadelphia ahead, and it did not rescue a game slipping away. It was something rarer: a remarkable finish to a comeback the Flyers had already made.

Hextall became the first NHL goaltender to score by shooting the puck into the opposing net. That wording matters. Billy Smith of the New York Islanders had been credited with a goal in 1979 after an opponent sent the puck into his own empty net; Smith was the last Islander to touch it. Hextall was not the first goalie with a goal beside his name. He was the first to put one there himself.

The distinction can sound like a footnote until the play is considered from Hextall’s end of the ice. A goalie had to get possession, recognize that the opposing net was empty, find a path past everyone in between and send the puck far enough to reach it. He also had to do all of that without forgetting why he was on the ice. The first clearing play and the second, deliberate shot belong to the same story: Hextall did not simply see an empty net and fire at it every time he touched the puck.

That blend of ambition and judgment was especially fitting for him. Hextall was already known as a goaltender who played the puck aggressively, leaving his crease and using his stick as more than an emergency means of escape. His shot against Boston was unprecedented as a scoring play, but puck-handling was not an unfamiliar part of his work. He had spent plenty of time treating the area beyond his crease as space in which he could act.

He had also established himself quickly as far more than an interesting puck-handler. In his rookie season, 1986–87, Hextall won the Vezina Trophy and the Conn Smythe Trophy as Philadelphia came within one victory of the Stanley Cup. By the night he scored against Boston, he was an accomplished young goaltender with an unmistakable style.

That style had a harsher side. Hextall drew criticism for using his stick violently, and his 104 penalty minutes in his rookie season were an NHL record for a goaltender. His puck skill explains the goal; his disciplinary reputation does not. Both were part of the contemporary picture of a player whose presence was difficult to overlook, but they should not be mistaken for the same quality.

The December game offered plenty to remember even before Hextall’s shot. Philadelphia entered the third period trailing Boston 2–1, then scored four times. Peter Zezel supplied two power-play goals during the rally. By the time the Bruins removed Lemelin, the Flyers had turned a deficit into a two-goal advantage. Boston’s extra attacker created the opening for Hextall, but it was also a sign that the visitors were running out of time.

From the Flyers’ bench, the payoff looked larger than an ordinary fifth goal. Hextall later recalled teammates coming onto the ice and Scott Mellanby screaming at him. He said the celebration felt almost like winning a playoff series. Philadelphia eventually gave players plaques depicting the game’s scoresheet; Hextall kept the puck.

His own accounts of the shot retained the element of uncertainty. Contemporary reporting quoted him saying he figured, “What the heck, go for it.” Looking back years later, he described the puck as “right in my wheelhouse” and said he was fortunate to lift it over the players and get it to the net. Those recollections fit the evidence of the play: he meant to shoot, but the puck still had a long and uncertain trip to make.

For anyone who saw the game, that second chance to shoot may be the detail worth revisiting. Hextall’s goal was not a trick he unveiled at the first possible moment. He let one opportunity pass, recognized a better one and took it.

A single empty-net goal by a goaltender could have remained an isolated curiosity, impressive chiefly because no one had done it quite that way before. Hextall complicated that account less than sixteen months later. On April 11, 1989, he scored again—this time in the playoffs, against the Washington Capitals.

The circumstances gave the second goal a different weight. Philadelphia and Washington were playing Game 5 of their first-round series. The Flyers had trailed for much of the game before another late surge. Brian Propp tied it, and Pelle Eklund scored the go-ahead goal. Washington pulled its goalie, and Hextall retrieved an errant pass by Scott Stevens. He sent the puck the length of the ice into the empty net at 18:58 of the third period.

Philadelphia won 8–5 and took a 3–2 series lead. A Flyers penalty was active when Hextall scored, so the goal counted as shorthanded. It was also the first goal by a goaltender in NHL playoff history.

There is a temptation to treat the Washington shot as a replay of the Boston one: same goalie, empty net, long distance, another entry in the record book. But its place in the game was different. In 1987, Hextall added a startling last note to a regular-season comeback. In 1989, his goal came at the end of a playoff rally that put Philadelphia ahead in a series. Looking back, Hextall said he found the second goal more satisfying because of what it helped the Flyers accomplish.

Neither shot requires an inflated claim to be memorable. Hextall did not need to decide the Boston game for that goal to matter, and his playoff goal did not create Philadelphia’s lead from nothing. His teammates did the scoring that turned both games. His contribution was to recognize that, after doing his primary job, he had a rare chance to add something of his own.

The two goals also keep the usual shorthand honest. “First goalie goal” blurs the difference between being credited with a goal and shooting one into the net. “Goalie who scored” captures the result but misses the skill that made Hextall a plausible candidate to do it. He was already willing and able to move the puck from places many goaltenders would have left alone.

For all the distance the puck traveled against Boston, the most revealing part of its journey may have been the brief interval before Hextall released it. He had already chosen the safer play once. Then the Bruins sent the puck back, the opening changed, and he made a different decision. The shot crossed the ice, caught the post and went in. What made it possible was not just that the net was empty. Hextall knew when he had time to aim for it.