Jake Voracek found himself in a pretty strange position on Tuesday night. He had just scored a power-play goal to give the Flyers a 3-0 lead over the lowly Colorado Avalanche at home and heard… boos?
There was a reason for the negative reaction. On first watch, it appeared to everyone in the arena and watching at home that it was Wayne Simmonds’ goal. The goal scorer was of greater importance than usual, because the tally would have given Simmonds a natural hat trick in a little over ten minutes of play.
Unfortunately, Simmonds was the only guy in the building who knew it was Voracek’s goal right away. Look at how close this is to touching his stick:
As hockey fans tend to do after one of their players scores threes goals, the Orange and Black faithful threw their hats onto the ice, 396 of them in total (no bras were reported this time around). Voracek had some fun with the strange situation when he was interviewed by Chris Therien at the first intermission:
Normally, that would be the end of the story. But since Simmonds didn’t get a third goal, Voracek decided to match the fans’ total and donate a whole bunch of hats to local hospitals. From CSN Philly:
Voracek said he will buy 396 new Flyers' hats and donate them to local hospitals for kids battling cancer. At about $20 a hat, that’s about $8,000.
But it's all for a good cause, Voracek says.
"Well, it's for a good cause, right? So, that's all that matters."
And luckily for Jake, he left the rink with no broken windows.
"I left the rink after midnight, just in case."
It’s a very nice gesture by Voracek, who was in fact able to make it out of the arena unharmed on Tuesday.
Follow Rich on Twitter: @rich_hofmann