Celly Hard

My sons Ciaran (left) and Aidan (right) celebrate another goal.

The mark of a good goalie at any level of hockey is .900.  90%.  A good goalie will stop the puck about 90% of the time.  A great goalie may stop the puck 92% - 94% of the time.  In the NHL, the difference between a goalie with an .895 or 89.5% save percentage and one with a .925 or 92.5% save percentage - a difference of only 3 goals per hundred shots - is about $5 million per season.

The goalie with the best save percentage in the NHL last season was Tim Thomas of the Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins.  His save percentage was a phenomenal .938, meaning he stopped 938 out of  every thousand shots taken against him last season.  It's no coincidence that his team won the Cup.

On the other end of the spectrum, the goalie with the worst save percentage was Ty Conklin of the bottom dwelling St. Louis Blues with an .881 save percentage.  The difference between 93.8% and 88.1% - 5 more goals allowed for every hundred shots taken - is the difference between winning and losing.

Don't ever give credence to anyone who belittles a goal in a hockey game as a fluke.  Every goal is a fluke.  Every goal scored in hockey is a statistical aberration.

Todd McClellan, head coach of the San Jose Sharks, is constantly talking about how each game his team plays is a a race to "3."  Most NHL games are won by the team that scores 3 goals first.  The highest scoring team in the NHL last season, the Vancouver Canucks, averaged 3.15 goals a game.  The lowest scoring team, the New Jersey Devils, averaged 2.08 goals per game.  The Canucks made it to the Stanley Cup Finals last season while the New Jersey Devils were the laughing stock of the league.  The difference between the two teams?  One goal a game.

So with goals being so rare, an average team must shoot the puck 30 or more times per game to get to that magic number of three: you would expect that players in all levels of hockey would learn to celebrate hard after every goal.  They do.

Kids sharpen their goal celebrations in practice, and I'm sure the pros do as well.  The kids look up the latest cool goal celebrations on YouTube, and I'm sure the pros, although they may not publicly admit it, do as well.

"We cellied hard, Dad," my son might say after a hard-fought win ("celly" being slang for celebrate). 

"Did you see his celly after his breakaway goal?  It was sick."

It's an important part of the culture of the game.  It brings teams together.  The only time it is not acceptable to have a big goal celebration is when you are way ahead of your opponent or way behind.  You don't want to show up another team that is losing - we've all been there at one time or another and will be again - and you don't want to celebrate a meaningless goal when the game is out of reach.  This is hockey, not football.

Even when I play in the late night beer leagues with all the slow, overweight Moms and Dads like myself, we celebrate our goals.  We all skate over to the goal scorer, pat him or her on his head and on his back, and then skate over to the bench and pound all the outstretched gloves coming from the bench.

I may have made a fist pump or two in celebration on the rare occasions when I have scored a big goal.

The ultimate celebration?  A game-winning overtime playoff goal.  Go crazy.  It may never come your way again.

Ciaran "cellies" hard after his defense partner scores in a playoff game.

It's been my experience that teams usually celebrate the hardest when a big goal is scored by a player on the team who doesn't normally score goals.  Ciaran's defense  partner all last year scored his first goal of the season during a playoff game last season.  I think everyone on the ice celebrated harder than he did.  You don't have anything planned if you don't score that much.

Aidan celebrates another goal with his linemate.

Five teenage boys who wouldn't give each other a hug off the ice if you paid them, suddenly become exuberant little kids when a goal is scored on the ice, jumping up and down and all over each other.  It's a moment of pure joy.  It's the same at every level.  Scoring a goal never gets old.  That celebration is part of what makes the game great.  Because every goal scored in hockey is a fluke; a weird bounce or a funny play.  The aim is to bring about the conditions when those weird bounces occur.  Create chaos and you will be rewarded.  And on those rare occasions the puck finally crosses the goal line and goes into the net; celly hard, boys, celly hard.  You never know how long it will be until the next one.  

(All photographs in this post were taken by Alan DeClerck.  Thanks again for all the great hockey pics, Alan!)