You can expect Marcus Kruger to do a lot of great things. He’ll take defensive zone faceoffs, kill penalties, and match up against whatever line you need him to. One thing we basically never expect from Kruger is to snipe a goal against one of the best goalies in the world.
Except that’s precisely what Kruger did to the Devils’ Cory Schneider on Thursday night.
Marcus Kruger flashes those hands on a rare snipe goal pic.twitter.com/wozrE8LrKc
— Satchel Price (@SatchelPrice) December 2, 2016
Holy crap.
To put this into a little perspective, Kruger scores so rarely that we’ve gotten into the habit of writing posts every time it happens. We did when he scored his first goal of the season — snapping a 47-game drought — and now we’re back at it for his second tally.
This one NEEDED to be written up, though, because it’s not just a rare goal. It’s an almost unbelievable goal, given Kruger’s historic lack of production and Schneider’s standing as one of the NHL’s better goalies.
It turns out Kruger can actually snap off a pretty sweet shot in the rare instances where he finds himself alone in space. He plays such a defensive-minded game that those chances are rare, but Brent Seabrook and Dennis Rasmussen did a great job getting the puck up the ice to Kruger ahead of the defense.
The Blackhawks center now has two goals and five assists in 25 games this season. Those totals already top the four assists (and zero goals) he put up in 41 games during an injury-shortened 2015-16 season.