The Edmonton Oilers haven’t been getting a whole lot of puck luck this season, but that all changed against the Minnesota Wild on Thursday night.
Just a minute into the game, Oilers superstar Leon Draisaitl casually dumped the puck from the Edmonton zone. The puck ended up rolling into the zone, bounced over the stick of two Wild defenders and then, somehow went straight through future Hall of Famer Marc-André Fleury.
The result was one of the strangest, and funniest, Oilers goals in recent memory.
Oh no Fleury… pic.twitter.com/kagz0su66S
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) November 22, 2024
Draisaitl got credit for the goal, having been the last Oilers player to touch the puck on the play. The easiest goal of his NHL career was Draisaitl’s 15th of the season which put him into a tie with Alex Ovechkin for the league lead.
You could tell from the immediate aftermath that Draisaitl was just as confused as everybody else in the arena about how that wound up in the back of the net. After all, he did shoot it from 134 feet away from the opposing net.
The Oilers faithful made sure to give Fleury a loud Bronx cheer the next time he touched the puck.
Fleury has given Edmonton fits throughout his career, and one could argue the Oilers were due to get easy on him at some point. It’s fitting that Fleury waited for his very last game in Edmonton to relent one like that.
The legendary goaltender moved into third all-time among NHL games played by a goalie at 1,030 tonight. Letting that one in the first minute of such a historic game probably wasn’t on his list.