McDonald’s Next Goal Is to Stay on His Feet

Andy McDonald’s first NHL goal featured perhaps the least graceful celebration in league history. McDonald picked up a free puck in front of King goalie Jamie Storr, skated to the left goal post and whistled it into the back of the net.

Arms raised and heart no doubt racing as the Arrowhead Pond roared, McDonald lost his balance and crash-landed into the end boards.

“What a great feeling,” McDonald said of scoring his first goal and first point in his eighth NHL game. “You never know when it’s going to come.”

McDonald said he will ship the puck home to his parents in Canada. “It’s too bad they couldn’t be here to see it,” he said. But probably not so bad that they missed his pratfall after scoring.

“I don’t think I could have hurt myself,” he said, a bit sheepishly. “I was pretty happy.”

*

Coach Craig Hartsburg shuffled his defense pairs during Sunday’s 4-0 victory over the Kings, mixing and matching to create more favorable matchups.

Vitaly Vishnevski, who had been playing with Pavel Trnka, the previous few games, skated with Ruslan Salei. Trnka was paired with Jason Marshall and Oleg Tverdovsky and Niclas Havelid played together.

“We’ve been trying to use Salei and Niclas against the other teams’ best players, but they have been on the ice for quite a few goals lately,” Hartsburg said. “We wanted another hard-nosed guy with ‘Vish’ because he’s had a lot of guys following him every night. We wanted to give him a big brother tonight.”