A disgruntled high school hockey goalie found a pretty unique way to get back at his coaches on Tuesday night – by scoring on his own net, flipping off his coaches before giving a salute and exiting the ice.
The above video comes via a Minnesota high school hockey game between Farmington Senior High School and Chaska High School, according to tweets from Follow The Puck, who seem to have a pretty good understanding of the backstory to the meltdown.
According to FTP, the goalie in the video is (or, more likely at this point, was) a senior netminder for Farmington, but had been acting as a backup to a sophomore goalie on the team. The coaches put the elder goalie in net for the school’s Senior Night, opening the door for him to display his dissatisfaction with his role on the team.
With Farmington leading 2-1 with three minutes left in the game, the goalie played a loose puck behind his own net and calmly slid it in for an own goal, tying the game. He then started to skate off the ice, flipped off his coaches, gave them a salute, and exited the rink. Then, Chaska went on to win the game 3-2.
While I don’t know the exact details or what precisely ticked off this kid enough to pull a stunt like this, I do know that it was one that was extremely selfish and unfair to a lot of people involved. For one, the kid’s teammates. I don’t care how unhappy you are with your role on a team, everyone who has played a team sport knows about the camaraderie shared between teammates. You’re supposed to have your teammates’ backs and treat them like brothers/sisters, but all this kid did was betray his…on senior night, no less. That’s generally a pretty special night for high school athletes and their families, and this kid robbed his teammates and those close to them of a special night so that he could settle a personal vendetta.
Talk all you want about how terrible a display of sportsmanship it was, but that doesn’t bother me as much as the selfishness factor in this situation. If it had been in blowout or meaningless game maybe I would feel different, but this just seems like a pretty douchey move in the applied situation.
UPDATE: Haven’t seen confirmation of this report yet, but this comes via a North Dakota hockey reporter:
Apparently, the goalie who scored on his own net and flipped off his coaches has been suspended from school for 10 days.
— Schlossman (@SchlossmanGF) February 13, 2013
