I wouldn’t be surprised if the folks at Safeway, which is now part of Sobeys, have been working hard to revise a certain contest called ‘score and win’. If the name of a shopper is drawn at the start of a Winnipeg Jets game, that person has a chance to win a million dollars, if a Jets player manages to score five goals in that game. The Jets were hosting the Florida Panthers, and the name drawn was Gail McDonald, a school principal living in Brandon. She had her 15 minutes of fame when Mathieu Perrault of the Jets came up with four goals as Winnipeg embarrassed the visitors 8 – 2.
Perrault had a couple good chances to make it 5 goals, and make Gail a millionaire, but it didn’t happen. Chances are the grocery chain set the bar at 5 goals because the Jets have not been the most prolific scoring team since moving to Winnipeg from Atlanta three years ago, but things are changing.
The list of players who have scored four goals in a game is fairly long, but the five goal list has only 56 names on it. It includes most of the names you would expect such as Rocket Richard, Wayne Gretzky, and Mario Lemieux. Interestingly, it includes Syd Howe, but not Gordie.
The six goal list is very short, and includes Red Berenson of Regina. On November 7, 1968, while he was playing for the expansion St. Louis Blues, Berenson put six pucks in the net while the Blues were playing the Flyers in Philadelphia. No other player has ever scored that many, on the road.
For my money though, the most amazing goal scoring record still belongs to the late Billy Mosienko of Winnipeg. On March 23, 1952, while playing for Chicago, Billy scored 3 goals in 21 seconds, and it was on the road, at Madison Square Garden in the Big Apple.
There was no big grocery money on the table then, and tickets to the game cost less than two bucks.
I’m Roger Currie
