Aiming to be back any day now for the Pittsburgh Penguins, goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic has embarked on a quick conditioning/rehab stint with Pittsburgh’s American Hockey League affiliate, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
Nedeljkovic started Friday night’s game for the WBS Pens as he is expected to re-join the NHL squad from Long Term Injured Reserve this weekend.
However, in his AHL conditioning game, Nedeljkovic did more than expected of him in WBS’s win Providence against the Bruins.
With Providence’s goalie pulled for the extra attacker, the puck came to Nedeljkovic, who had enough space to risk it all and fire the puck all the way down the ice at the yawning opposing net.
And did he ever deliver:
Nedeljkovic’s goal, along with stopping 17 of 19 shots in between the pipes for WBS, earned him first star honors in the team’s eventual 4-2 win.
Believe it or not, this was not Ned’s first goalie goal down in the American Hockey League. Back when he was a member of the Charlotte Checkers (then the AHL affiliate for the Carolina Hurricanes), he scored his first career goal in a 7-3 win over the Hartford Wolf Pack.
In the Charlotte game, Nedeljkovic had a lot more breathing room with a 6-3 lead on his side, but in the WBS contest, he had to nail that shot with a single goal lead to work with.
Now at two career AHL goals, Ned becomes the first goaltender in AHL history to have multiple goalie goals.
Jagger Joshua, Ty Smith, and Valterri Puustinen also scored for the Penguins, who improved to 7-5-2-0 on the AHL season.
Nedeljkovic has stated that he hopes to be back for Pittsburgh on Sunday, when they host the Vegas Golden Knights. If that holds true, Magnus Hellberg will serve as the presumable backup for the Penguins tonight as they visit the Carolina Hurricanes.
Hellberg will then, in all likelihood, be waived, being re-assigned to the AHL should he go unclaimed (which is not a given).
Once Ned returns to the Penguin lineup, the team will have two goaltenders who have scored goals in their professional career. Tristan Jarry also has an AHL goal under his belt, scoring for WBS during the 2018-19 season, which was the first goalie goal in the WBS Penguins history.
Nedeljkovic has been out of the lineup since October 24th, after sustaining an injury in just his second game as a member of the Penguins.
Ned was sporting a 1-1-0 record with a 3.01 goals against average and a .901 save percentage.
(Featured photo from the WBS Pens)
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