Decades before Andrei Svechnikov pulled it off in the NHL, Mike Legg sparked the lacrosse-style frenzy when he scored 'The Michigan Goal'. He spoke to SachdevaSonny about seeing his move come to the big leagues, and what its arrival means for the game.
Sportsnet: Take us through the original Michigan Goal from ’96. What do you remember about the actual play and what you were feeling as you scored that goal?We had to win that game to go on to the Final Four. It was just practicing it and getting so comfortable with it that in different situations, any situation, you could pretty much pull it off 98 per cent of the time. But leading into the playoffs, I remember telling myself, ‘It’s playoff time, there’s got to be a better option.
That was just familiar. It totally flipped after that. And yeah, we went on to win that game of course, and went on and win a national championship, which probably made it even bigger at the time. And I just sort of plugged it in my head. I had no clue how he did it, but in my head, I thought ‘I’m going to try to do something like that.’ I remember I was too nervous to go up and talk to him — that guy’s so smooth, what unbelievable hands. But I want to be the cool kid right, not go up like,or something. So I never had the gumption to go talk to him. From there, I just had it in my head I was going to do it a certain way.
But yeah, after that, well I was in college, so with the NCAA rules, I wasn’t allowed any of the money or any of that, it was all above board. But they allowed me to go to Sweden for almost a week, and I won, I think it was the ‘Goal of the Year,’ out of a Swedish magazine,. And that was pretty interesting, me as a young kid over there, by myself with Nicklas Lidstrom, Anders Eriksson, Peter Forsberg.
SN: Where were you when you heard that he did it — did you start getting texts from everybody? How did you find out?Oh yeah. Well, I’m a firefighter in Burnaby here, it’s a really close department, and it’s just been non-stop — New Year’s Eve, my phone was blowing up. Any time anybody attempts it or does it, it’s just, ‘Hey a guy did it in here! A guy tried it in this league! Did you see this?’ They’ll send me videos of it. It’s pretty cool — I just love the evolution of it.
So now it’ll be more of a skill game, and it’s gone that way in the last couple years. You don’t see the bench-clearing brawls and all that kind of stuff, how it used to be. And that’s a step in the more-skilled direction. That’s the way the game’s going. So, it’s excitement in the game — I hope both are still going to be there. I don’t know if that’s possible or not.
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