Being an NHL goalie seems incredibly difficult, as the best hockey players in the world rip shots at you, sometimes in excess of 100 miles per hour, all while others try desperately to screen your vision.
However, there are certain times when goalies get a little too much dip on their chip and make life more difficult on themselves when it comes to handling the puck, because having borderline irrational confidence in all of your abilities is part of being a professional athlete. On Thursday night, we saw a rather hilarious example of this when Detroit Red Wings goalie Alex Nedeljkovic saw a puck bounding towards his end and decided he should take a mighty swat at it, rather than letting it go behind the goal. That turned out to be a disastrous decision, as he somehow whiffed and shot the puck backwards between his own legs and into the goal.
Nedeljkovic scores on himself pic.twitter.com/dqEMODIkt7
— CJ Fogler AKA Perc70 #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) March 11, 2022
I can only imagine the helpless feeling as soon as the puck started going between his legs and he had no chance of stopping it from going in his own net. Happily for Nedeljkovic, his teammates picked him up and regained a 3-2 lead after the end of the first period despite his error, but maybe next time just let the puck go or hold it up rather than trying to make a big play in that situation.