Joey Hishon's Game-Winner Gives Avalanche a Perfect Feel-Good Moment

Professional sports are, above all other things, serious business. Partially, it is the money—billionaire owners squeezing every dollar and drop of prestige out of their purchases and millionaire players fighting for their share even as they’re treated like commodities by owners and fans alike.

The way we watch sports has changed, too, with the media reporting on and fans debating even the smallest transactions. This combination of obsessive coverage and the massive financial stakes involved makes it easy to lose the joy and wonder of sports.

Then a guy like Joey Hishon scores his first career NHL goal, and the reasons we watch these games are made clear.  

The goal came in Hishon’s 11th career game. The 23-year-old is in his second full professional season and his very first NHL regular-season call-up. In his first 10 games, he failed to record a single point for a Colorado Avalanche team that has long been out of the playoff race. Then on Tuesday against the Nashville Predators, he wired a wrist shot from the high slot, beating Preds goaltender Pekka Rinne. The goal broke a 2-2 tie and ended up standing as the winner. Hishon was named first star:

It’s a nice moment for a young player finding his way in pro hockey. What makes it more than that is Hishon’s backstory.

Hishon was a top prospect as a teenager. As a 17-year-old in 2008-09, he recorded 37 goals and 81 points in just 65 games; he wasn’t a draft-eligible player until 2010, but that performance led to high expectations, and for good reason. If we look at the actual top two picks in the 2010 draft, Hishon was just barely outscored by Taylor Hall (90 points in 63 games) and actually outscored No. 2 selection Tyler Seguin (67 points in 61 games).

Then injury struck. Reading Hishon’s profile in McKeen’s 2010 Draft Preview, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the centre, who saw his season derailed by a pulled groin early, then a broken foot while blocking a shot and finally a torn MCL.

“It can be argued that Hishon never played a single healthy game,” McKeen’s noted sadly, “and as a result was unable to duplicate his offensive feats of a year ago where he finished in the top 10 of OHL scoring.”

Still, Hishon’s track record as a point producer was solid, even if his numbers had dipped. And despite the injuries and his lack of size, his speed and competitive spirit were seen as real assets. The Hockey News 2010 Draft Preview included an anecdote in its write-up that made the latter quality clear.

“How competitive is Hishon?” asked the magazine. “Well, the game he broke his foot, he scored shorthanded after the injury and only learned the foot was broken afterwards.”

Reed Saxon/Associated Press

Colorado, understandably, decided that Hishon was the kind of player it wanted on the roster. Both McKeen’s and The Hockey News had him rated as a second-round prospect, but the Avs stepped up and took him in the middle of the first round, No. 17 overall.

Immediately, the choice paid off. The following year saw Hishon put up 87 points in just 50 OHL games, leading his Owen Sound Attack in scoring. He led the team in scoring in the postseason, too, helping lead the Attack to the OHL championship.

“While some ridiculed Colorado’s selection last year,” concluded THN’s 2011 Future Watch, “they aren’t now.”

As OHL champions, the Attack automatically entered the 2011 Memorial Cup, the annual tournament between Canada’s three best major junior teams and a host club chosen in advance. That’s where Hishon crossed the path of current Los Angeles Kings rearguard Brayden McNabb.

The consequences for Owen Sound were unfortunate. The Attack won that game 5-0, but without Hishon, they wouldn’t win another contest in the tournament. But the consequences for Hishon were worse.

Hishon’s 2011-12 season was erased completely thanks to the effects of that elbow. His 2012-13 season disappeared almost entirely, too; he played his first game on April 12, 2013 with Colorado’s AHL affiliate in Lake Erie, almost two full years after he was sidelined by the McNabb hit.

It hasn’t gone seamlessly. In 2013-14, his first full year in the minors, he posted just 24 points in 50 games. He did play well enough to get into a handful of playoff games for the Avs that spring but started 2014-15 in the minors once again. He had 32 points in 50 games when Colorado called him up for his regular-season NHL debut.

Eleven games in, he scored the goal we discussed above.

From the exuberance, the sheer joy on the faces of a team that (by the standings, at least) has nothing left to play for, it shows that they recognized this goal for what it was. This was a truly special moment. It is the kind of moment that makes the games worth watching.

Statistics courtesy of NHL.com and theAHL.com. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.