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The Skinny: Detroit 2, Isles 1

"The Skinny"  By Eric Hornick Game 20 Detroit 2, Isles 1 In a game that the Isles led for nearly fifty minutes, Jonatan Berggren a...

Monday, September 22, 2014

Move over Trotts, here comes Merlyn Philips. The Skinny on an NHL record book change

On March 22, 1984,  Bryan Trottier scored a goal 5 seconds into an Isles game in Boston.  (It was an unusual broadcast that night as Ed Westfall came down with laryngitis)

Trottier became the second player in modern NHL history to score :05 into play (Doug Smail did so for Winnipeg in 1981); Buffalo's Alex Mogilny would join them in the record book in 1991.  For the past two decades, those three players have had the record book to themselves.

The NHL, however, is in the midst of digitizing old records and in doing so, they found a goal by a guy named Merlyn Phillips nearly 88 years after it happened.  Phillips, playing for the Montreal Maroons, scored 5 seconds into a game in Chicago on December 29, 1926.  Phillips played 278 games for the Maroons; he finished his NHL career with the NY Americans in the 1932-33 season.  
 
Forever1940 is the nom de plume of Eric Hornick, statistician on Islander home telecasts since January 21, 1982. Visit my blog: NYISkinny.com and follow me on Twitter @ehornick

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