Luckily for the Nashville Predators, they were already leading, 3-1, late in the third period when center Craig Smith authored perhaps the most spellbinding, impossible miss of the year.
Trailing in the final minutes of regulation, the slumping Maple Leafs pulled goaltender Ben Scrivens. But that gambit seemed to backfire when Smith received a pass just a few feet from the wide open net. Smith took the shot, the sirens blared, the crowd went into a frenzy and the scoreboard flashed 4-1. Goal! Goal? Fail...
Then, all of the sudden, the sirens stopped and the cameras caught Smith skating back to the ice with a dejected look on his face.
"No, they're saying it didn't go in," one of the broadcasters said, seemingly in disbelief of what he just witnessed. "They're saying it went up and over the net."
And that's exactly what happened. The replay showed that Smith, instead of just tapping the puck home, lifted it over the crossbar and somehow launched it into the stands. Shortly after the epic fail, Nashville's Matt Halischuk was able to score on the open net, giving the Predators the 4-1 win.
Despite the win, that high-shot lowlight might stick with Smith for a while.
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