For those skilled enough to perhaps one day lace up their skates in the NHL, they dream of how their first big league goal will play out.
For 24-year old Brandon Duhaime, you can bet he didn’t expect his coach to joke that it was “the ugliest first goal he’d ever seen.”
The Florida native was skating in one of his first games with the Minnesota Wild in late October on the road against the Anaheim Ducks. His stick was knocked out of his hands while trying to plant himself in front of the Anaheim net, and when he went down to retrieve it, a shot happened to ricochet off of his skate and into the net.
Well, not the prettiest. But how many can say they’ve scored an NHL goal?
Duhaime scored six of them with the Merritt Centennials in a full season dressing for the junior A squad in 2014-15. He added 19 assists on top of that in his 53 games.
Merritt won 32 games in 2014-15 and lost 24, eventually falling in the playoffs in the Interior division semifinals.
He was chosen in January of 2015 to play in the CJHL Prospects Game, one of twelve players in the BCHL to do so.
Arriving in Merritt after a brief stint with the West Kelowna Warriors, Duhaime spent three seasons with Providence College of the NCAA, before being drafted in the fourth round of the 2016 NHL draft and toiling in Minnesota Wild’s AHL system prior to making his long-awaited NHL debut.
And the former Cent has made an impact on the big squad – in thirteen games with the Wild, he has put up a pair of goals and three assists.
