Over the past few weeks, the Predators haven’t gotten very many lucky breaks. They recently ended the longest scoreless streak in franchise history (three games and change) and have still been trying to score more goals.
James Neal got a glorious chance to shoot on an empty net against the Arizona Coyotes, and DID NOT EVEN SCORE.
Neal hits the outside post of an open net pic.twitter.com/rZOJ74WDk3
— Stephanie (@myregularface) December 2, 2015
Coyotes goaltender Mike Smith aggressively tried to stop a puck that was sliding into the middle of his defensive zone. Neal caught up to the puck first, and slid it through Smith and stormed past him. From there, the Predators sniper had all the time in the world to tap the puck into the yawning 4’x6′ opening. Again, JAMES NEAL MISSED THE ENTIRE FREAKING NET.
Let this illustration be your guide:
This is not quite on the level of Craig Smith sending the puck into the cheap seats, but it’s pretty close. We’ll cut a little bit of slack for the severe angle. But when Neal retires, he’ll look at this career goal total and know it should be one higher. That stings. There could possibly be an argument made that the goal wouldn’t have counted because Smith’s mask was knocked off, but that makes this less fun.
If it’s any consolation to him, he sank the actual empty-netter later in the period to ice a 5-2 Nashville win.