If a player scores on the wrong goal, does that count toward his stats? Is it a negative goal?
What about a hat trick? I suppose if my team were down by 9 goals, I could “score” three more against my own empty net… thereby padding my stats.
I don’t know about Hockey… but in Soccer (which is similar, scoring-wise) “own goals” by a player are tallied separately from goals scored.
A goal is awarded to the last player on the opposing team to touch the puck. There are so many deflections and bounces in hockey that to award “own goals” as in soccer would be punishingly unfair.
This rule was responsible for the first goal awarded to a goalie, when Billy Smith of the New York Islanders had a puck deflect off him on a delayed penalty (no control, so no whistle) and when the other team had pulled its goalie for an extra attacker. The pass back to the defenceman was missed and went all the way into the empty net. Smith was the last Islander to touch the puck, so the goal was his, even though he didn’t play the puck or even direct it.
So, technically, Billy Smith could’ve got a hat trick… if someone on the other team decided to use the empty net for target practice, since they’re going to lose anyways.
Something like this happened a couple of years back in an Anaheim Ducks/Detroit Red Wings game. Anaheim had pulled their goalie on a delayed penalty when Adam Oates passed the puck back to the Detroit blue line. There was noone back there and the puck rolled all the way down and into the Anaheim goal. They had to go back a ways to discover that the puck had bounced off of Kirk Maltbys skate some thirty seconds prior.