As you probably know, when a hockey player scores three goals in a game, it's called a "hat trick."
Devout hockey fans are also familiar with the "Gordie Howe hat trick," named for (by far) the greatest pre-Gretzky player in NHL history. It consists of a goal, an assist, and a fight in one game.
Well, Wikipedia has taken it a whole other step further with what it calls the "Mario Lemieux hat trick." (For non-hockey-obsessives, various health issues kept Lemieux [Luh-myoo] from playing a full and lengthy career. Nonetheless, his averages are actually very similar to Gretzky's, and he's certainly in the top five of hockey players all time.)
In 1993 Lemieux received radiation treatment for cancer on the day of a game in which he went on to score a goal and an assist, thus the "Mario Lemieux hat trick." Wow.
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As a side note, another thing I found absolutely amazing was the unnamed (though referred to as the "quintella" or "Lemieux cycle") is a feat which will probably never be repeated in hockey history - on December 31, 1988, Lemieux scored a powerplay goal, shorthanded goal, even-strength goal, empty-net goal, and a penalty shot. This was the first of four five-goal games for Lemieux, which ties him with Gretzky for second all time, though the record holder, Joe Malone, played in the 1910s.
Finally, I'll just add that I watched a game where Lemieux scored five goals in a game once. It was March 26, 1996, and he was playing Wayne Gretzky and the St. Louis Blues. He would add two assists for a total of seven points in the Penguins 8-4 victory.
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Someone's been Wiki diving.
ReplyDeleteI really just don't have the base of hockey knowledge required to understand how impressive the Lemieux Cycle is, though I do feel pretty impressed even now. I kind of like the Lemieux Hat Trick idea, though, especially since it can be expanded to other sports. Example: "And Lance, fresh from the Tour's first ever Lemieux Hat Trick, seems to be in rare form today." Or it could be changed for different treatments/ailments: The Alonzo Mourning triple-double can include three dialysis treatments; the Plaxico Burress Trick includes sweat pants, gunshot wounds, and a night club. The list can be endless!
A suggested Wiki-dive starting point: Alexander Selkirk, the possible inspiration for Defoe's character Robinson Crusoe. I ended up going past Defoe, other castaways, the list of the first novel in English, and many other pages before pulling myself away.
OK, even without much depth of hockey history, it's not hard to appreciate how amazing this feat is.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, let's just start with five goal games. The last one was in December 2007. The last one before that was in December 1996. So there's a starting point.
Now consider penalty shots. I couldn't find data on penalty shot history, but there have been 46 in the history of the playoffs. Using extremely conservative methods, there have been no more than 730 penalty shots in history, and likely the number is close to 200. I'll be conservative again and estimate that 120 of these ended in goals.
So there have been 59 five-goal games and 120 penalty shot goals. It's fantastically unlikely that those would occur in the same game, but we're not done yet.
The Lemieux Cycle includes an empty-net goal. Now, last year the average team scored 2.8 goals/game. But for a Lemieux Cycle, the player would already have to have four goals in the game AND the game would have to be close enough that the other team is willing to pull its goalie. AND the team has to score an empty net goal. AND a player who already has four goals in the game has to be willing (and able) to be the one to score the cheap goal.
And none of that even takes into account the fact that the other three goals have to be one each on the powerplay, even-strength, and shorthanded.