Penguins' Nedeljkovic becomes 1st goalie with goal, assist in same game

Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic capped a 40-save night with a goal against the Buffalo Sabres on Friday, becoming the first netminder ever to tally a goal and an assist in the same NHL game.

His reaction proved his excitement about achieving the feat.

"Maybe I pushed it a little too far jumping into the bench there, but it's my first (NHL) goal. What do you expect?" Nedeljkovic said, according to The Athletic's Matthew Fairburn.

Penguins forward Bryan Rust enjoyed the over-the-top celebration.

"It was pretty extra, but I feel like in that situation, you need to be extra," Rust said.

Nedeljkovic now has four goals in his professional career. He scored in the ECHL in 2016 before netting two in the AHL in 2018 and in 2023.

It's the first time two netminders have shot and scored in the same season, as Minnesota Wild goaltender Filip Gustavsson scored a goal Oct. 16.

Nedeljkovic talked about the difficulty of scoring after Gustavsson's goal.

"More guys than not in the NHL right now are physically capable of doing it," Nedeljkovic told NHL.com's Kevin Woodley in October. "If you gave them the ice to themselves and just said, 'Launch the puck in the air, all the way past the far blue line and into the net,' more goalies are capable of doing that. It's not easy by any means because you've still got to get it 200 feet, over five or six guys, and into a six-foot wide net. So, it's still not easy, but guys are getting really good at it."

Nedeljkovic also said in October that gathering the puck behind the net and scoring adds another layer of difficulty, which is the way he scored Friday.

"The last three years, it's always been from in front of the goal line," the netminder said. "It makes life a lot easier when you can get the puck in front of the goal line as opposed to having to go behind and pull a dump-in off the wall and turn your whole body back up ice. Even the three I've scored, they've all been from the net front."

Nedeljkovic is the 11th goaltender ever to shoot the puck for a goal and the 16th to be credited with a tally.

The Penguins are the second franchise to have two goaltenders find the back of the net after Tristan Jarry scored a goal on Nov. 30, 2023. The Nashville Predators were the first with Chris Mason (2006) and Pekka Rinne (2020).