The Infamous Bobby Rousseau Penalty Shot

Here's another cool story from  Bruce McDougall's excellent book, "The Last Hockey Game". In it there is a quick mention made of Montreal Canadien Bobby Rousseau scoring a penalty shot goal against Boston's Bruce Gamble...with a slap shot. This incident is also mentioned by other credible and excellent sources like Joe Pelletier's greatesthockeylegends.com and Dennis Kane's terrific Canadiens site denniskanemontrealcanadiens.wordpress.com . Kane's site also includes a photo of said event. The only thing is, I'm just not all that sure the event actually happened as described over the years.

If we take the details at face value, it's easy to narrow down the occaisons when Rousseau scored against Gamble while he was in Boston. Gamble was only in Boston for two seasons, 1960/61 and 1961/62. Rousseau played a mere 15 games as a rookie in 60/61, so there are minimal games to look at. There are only two goals Rousseau scored against Gamble when he played for Boston; Feb. 15, 1962 and March 10, 1962. Both of these goals had two assists awarded, therefore were not penalty shots.

So, Rousseau never did score a penalty shot goal against Gamble while Gamble was a member of the Bruins. What if we find all the goals Rosseau scored on Gamble, period. Where any of these ones on a penalty shot?

Rousseau Game vs. Gamble with Toronto, Goals noted

Feb 20, 66

Mar 2, 66 Goal

Mar 16, 66 Goal

Dec 21, 66 

Jan 11, 67

Jan 25, 67

Mar 22, 67

Dec 20, 67

Jan 30, 68

Mar 20, 68 2 Goals

Nov 14, 68

Dec 11, 68

Dec 26, 68

Feb 19, 69 Goal

Mar 6, 69

Mar 26, 69

Oct 15, 69

Nov 26, 69

Feb 11, 70

Mar 15, 70

Mar 25, 70 Goal

Using the Hockey Summary Project we can see that not one of these goals was scored via a penalty shot. What now? Perhaps the story was twisted over the years. Maybe it was indeed a penalty shot goal against Boston, but not on Bruce Gamble. Following are Rousseau's goals against Boston over the years.

Rousseau Goals vs Boston

Jan 12, 63

Feb 10, 63

Feb 14, 63 

Mar 7 63 2 Goals

Mar 17, 63

Nov 17, 63

Jan 1, 64

Jan 4, 64

Feb 20, 64

Nov 6, 65

Nov 7, 65

Dec 8, 65

Mar 9, 66

Mar 26, 66

Oct 22, 66

Oct 23, 66

Mar 15, 67 2 Goals

Mar 26, 67

Nov 25, 67

Jan 13, 68

Dec 22, 68

Mar 29, 69

Nov 1, 69

None of these were scored on a penalty shot...except February 14, 1963. The Canadian Press even mentions it;

"Bobby Rousseau scored on the penalty shot, at 1:50 of the third period. Jean-Guy Talbot of Montreal was sitting out a major penalty when Rousseau stole the puck from Boston's Doug Mohns, but was grabbed from behind by Murray Oliver as he broke into the clear.

Referee Art Skov immediately awarded the penalty shot and Rousseau beat Johnston with a hard drive into a low corner."

"A hard drive into a low corner," on a penalty shot, sure does sound like a slap shot. It also sure does look like what's happening in the photo above, but the photo says it's Bruce Gamble in the net. Seeing as we can't see a number on the tender, and they both caught with their left hand the only distinguishing feature to determine who the goalie is may be the hairline.

 

Gamble is on the left, pictured during the same era as the photo of the alleged penalty shot goal. Johnston is the second two shots. To me, the goalie in the photo has a higher, more "widow's peak" hairline that would seem to match Gamble's. So, where does that leave us? 

It seems the photo of Rousseau scoring on the long slap shot is in fact against Bruce Gamble, but I'm fairly certain this is not the penalty shot goal that has been re-told many times. Perhaps Rousseau was simply on a breakaway when he decided to wind up and hammer it. This has to be from either the Feb. 15 or March 10 1962 games. It looks like the actual penalty shot goal on Johnston from the following year may be the one that has been regaled over the years, just with the wrong goalie in net.


UPDATE
With thanks to one of my readers, I am now able to verify that on February 15, 1962 Bobby Rousseau did in fact score with a slap shot on a penalty shot against the Bruins Bruce Gamble. I did mention that this date was onr of only two that Rousseau scored against Gamble while he was with Boston, the problem with looking through multiple boxscores manually is that I missed the second  goal that he scored during the 9-1 blow-out that day. He tallied a shorthanded marker in the third period against Gamble in addition to his one earlier that had two assists.

In checking the Montreal Gazette's game report (which I didn't do originally thinking he only scored the one goal) we see it all clearly now;
"The feature of the game was Rousseau's penalty shot, awarded by Referee Frank Udvari after Bobby was pulled down from behind by Jerry Toppazzini. The rookie appeared as cool as a veteran as he skated in and let go a 35-foot slap-shot that went cleanly through Gamble's legs.
'I made  mistake,' said Rousseau afterwards. 'Jean Beliveau told me to shoot but I know he didn't mean a slap shot or for me to let it go so far out.' "

So there it is. The slap-shot on a penalty shot happened on February 15, 1962, and he may very well have repeated the feat almost exactly a year later against Eddie Johnston. Needless to say, the man enjoyed the slap shot.