Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was in his crease at KeyBank Center on Wednesday with the puck live in the Buffalo Sabres end. He leaned back over the top of his own net, extended his arm, and let go of his stick.
Then he carried on playing without one.
The clip spread within minutes, and nobody watching had the faintest idea what he was doing.
“Genuinely, what was he thinking?” one fan wrote. “But… why?” asked another. Two others reached the same conclusion from different directions: “Goalies man, goalies,” and “Goalies are weird.”
Luukkonen’s night:
| Shots faced | Saves | Goals against | Season save percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | 9 | 5 | .878 |
Can a goalie play with a broken stick?
The rulebook treats the two positions completely differently, which is where this appears to have gone wrong. A skater with a broken stick has to drop it immediately and cannot pick up another from the ice. A goaltender is under no such obligation and may carry on until the whistle goes or until somebody legally hands him a replacement.
Darren Pang explained on the TNT broadcast shortly afterwards that a fair number of goaltenders don’t know the distinction and apply the skater’s rule to themselves.
Luukkonen was handed a new stick at the next stoppage, which rather suggests the one he discarded was broken. On the evidence, he knew the rule about broken sticks. He just thought it applied to him.
The rest of the night went no better. He allowed five goals on 14 shots, picked up a Bronx cheer from his own crowd for a routine save, and was pulled by Lindy Ruff immediately after Nikita Kucherov beat him on a backhand that went under his arm.
“I just thought it wasn’t going good for him. I just thought, get him out, maybe Ellie gives us a little bit of a spark,” Ruff said.
Buffalo had climbed back from 4-0 down to 4-3 through Tage Thompson before the whole thing came apart. Tampa Bay won 8-3, Kucherov completed a natural hat trick, and the Sabres finished a four-game homestand having lost three of them.
It was Luukkonen’s twelfth start of the season. He has now conceded four or more goals in half of them.
Read more:
