The shortest career in NHL historical past? 1 shift. 4 seconds. 0 regrets

Late in the primary interval, Greg Koehler rose from the Hurricanes bench. He flung his legs over the boards and, for the primary time, propelled himself into the guts of NHL motion. The second his left skate hit the ice, a dream was realized. It was Dec. 29, 2000, and he was a giant leaguer.

Sitting on the bench a lot of the interval had given Koehler time to take in his environment at Columbus’ Nationwide Arena and settle his nerves. By the time he went on for his first shift, he was clear-headed, hungry to indicate he belonged. He skated ahead, crossing the GMC emblem in entrance of the bench earlier than turning towards the offensive zone. Carolina’s Ron Francis, a number of strides forward, raced towards a unfastened puck in the nook. Koehler adopted, his eyes up in anticipation for a move from his captain. It took eight strides for him to cross the blue line.

“Oh, there he is!” shouted his mother, Cathy Koehler, watching on TV from the household dwelling in Scarborough, Ontario.

But as Koehler reached Carolina’s offensive zone, Blue Jackets ahead Steve Heinze’s stick hooked round Francis. The veteran crashed to the ice and slid into the wall. An official blew his whistle instantly. It was a clear-cut penalty.

“Ah, f—,” Koehler thought to himself and immediately turned towards the bench. He wasn’t on Carolina’s energy play unit, so he knew his shift was over. There had been different moments in the interval Koehler had been able to take the ice, however one thing all the time appeared to get in the best way, be it a penalty or a teammate not heading to the bench for a line change.

“Sorry, kid,” Carolina coach Paul Maurice stated, trying down the bench towards his new ahead. “I’m trying.”

The recreation stayed tight the remainder of the night. With Carolina chasing the lead towards the growth Blue Jackets, Maurice by no means referred to as Koehler’s identify once more. He didn’t get again on the ice. Not that day, and by no means once more in an NHL recreation.

After 4 seconds and eight strides, his NHL career was over. His stick by no means touched the puck.

Since the NHL started monitoring ice time in 1997-98, no skater’s career has been shorter than Koehler’s 4 seconds. Jeff Libby, who performed 43 seconds with the Islanders in 1998, is subsequent closest. He and Koehler are the one skaters in NHL historical past to have recorded just one shift.

The official field rating and NHL database mistakenly say Koehler performed 46 seconds. But upon evaluate of the sport footage supplied by the Blue Jackets, Koehler’s reminiscence is appropriate. He took the ice solely as soon as, in the moments main as much as Heinze hooking Francis. Time on ice figures are stored manually, so it’s totally attainable the NHL staff logging 38 skaters’ time in the Carolina-Columbus recreation mistook another person for Koehler. Shane Willis, certainly one of Koehler’s teammates in the Hurricanes group, remembers one thing comparable occurring to him. He recollects getting credited for a shift as soon as in Buffalo regardless of sitting on the bench your entire recreation.

Mistakes occur, particularly in the case of monitoring who’s on the ice at an actual second.

Now 48, Koehler isn’t blown away by the magnitude of constructing the NHL, neither is he tortured by staying there for much less time than it takes to tie a shoe. Maybe, as he believes, the Hurricanes didn’t give him a good shot. Maybe he bought unfortunate.

Or possibly he was merely adequate to succeed in the best degree — to inhale the chilly air at ice degree for one fleeting night — however not adequate to remain there. Those are unanswerable questions, although not ones that eat at him.

“I’m not here to cry the blues,” he says. “I have no regrets about what happened.”

As his dad and mom advised him in the aftermath of his lone NHL recreation, he had made it. Of all the children around the globe who develop up enjoying hockey, solely a fraction of a fraction of a fraction play in the NHL. Koehler was certainly one of them. He reached the top, even when just for mere seconds.

Koehler’s relationship with hockey was a love affair from a younger age. He as soon as used a patch of ice frozen on the sidewalk to observe skating till his mother referred to as him inside. He watched “Hockey Night in Canada” each Saturday along with his dad and mom. He performed ball hockey in the road along with his neighbors and brothers and anybody he might discover. He wakened each morning a poster of Wayne Gretzky in an Oilers sweater.

When Koehler was 13 and captain of the AAA Pee Wee Toronto Marlies, Hockey Hall of Famer Ken Dryden was in the midst of making “Home Game,” a CBC TV collection that may ultimately be changed into a e book co-written with Roy MacGregor. Dryden wished to dedicate one chapter to youth hockey and the pressures and time commitments that got here with it, for the gamers themselves and for his or her households. He recognized Koehler — along with his 5 brothers, a child sister and all of the ensuing chaos — as an ideal topic.

So Dryden shadowed the younger Greg because the Marlies ready for the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament. He got here by the Koehlers’ bungalow on Amberley Drive virtually on daily basis. Once, he bought down on his fingers and knees to assist Greg and his pals retrieve a ball from the bushes so they might proceed their recreation on the road.

Greg was a quiet child, and Cathy doesn’t bear in mind Dryden being probably the most vocal, both. Perhaps, she thinks, that’s why he and Greg had been in a position to have good conversations on digicam. Dryden captured the essence of Koehler’s youth. He had posters of Alyssa Milano, his celeb crush, in his room, often modified his child sister’s diaper and was all the time serious about hockey. In the TV episode, “Playing Fields of Scarborough,” Dryden displays on his personal upbringing, how he had video games or practiced 75 nights a yr and made the NHL as a result of he outworked everybody else. Koehler, in the meantime, devoted 140-plus nights to video games and observe yearly.

“As with all prodigies, Greg will go as far as his mind drives him, as his body allows,” Dryden says over photographs of the household driving to hockey observe. “As far as his parents scrimp and save, encourage and push him on.”

Dryden caught Koehler throughout a troublesome season. Though he would sooner or later develop as much as be 6-feet-2 and 194 kilos, he was tiny at 13. He couldn’t dominate video games like he used to. As Dryden pontificates, “at 13, only the stars are left, and the prodigy stops looking like Gretzky.” Greg advised his mother he was anxious he’d by no means rating once more.

During Marlies tryouts the following spring, Koehler walked as much as the board that listed gamers the workforce wished to come back again for ultimate tryouts. Koehler learn over the taped sheet of paper twice, however he couldn’t discover his identify. He flipped the web page over, questioning if there was something on the again. There wasn’t.

Tears sprung in his eyes. Within one yr, he’d gone from captain of the workforce to chop.

“That kind of crushed him for a while,” Cathy says. “He didn’t really want to play after that.”

Ball hockey in the road by no means stopped, however Koehler took the spring off from enjoying in an organized league. Then, the following fall, one other space coach satisfied him to come back out for a skate. That reignited Koehler, and he joined the workforce, the Wexford Raiders. From there, Koehler went to a workforce in Niagara Falls and began to develop bodily. He ultimately earned a scholarship to UMass-Lowell, then signed with the Hurricanes group after two years. He used his $650,000 signing bonus to repay his dad and mom’ home, the place they nonetheless dwell.

Greg Koehler, in crimson, performed for a number of minor league organizations, together with the Lowell Lock Monsters in 2001-02. (Jill Brady / Portland Press Herald by way of Getty Images)

Years later, when reflecting on his NHL debut, Koehler thinks again to that dreadful day on the Marlies rink, the day that he says hardened him and, in the end, pushed him ahead.

“It’s almost like, ‘f— you,’” he says. “‘I told you I could do it.’”

Koehler owed his coach an apology. He was with the Cincinnati Cyclones in his third full skilled season, and the workers had put him in a 3rd line checking function. That irritated him. He was in the IHL, then only one degree beneath the NHL, and believed he must be enjoying in extra offensive conditions. One early-season recreation, his anger boiled over on the bench. He slammed his stick, then threw it behind him in the overall neighborhood of coach Ron Smith.

“What was that?” the coach requested Koehler in his workplace after the workforce’s subsequent observe.

Koehler apologized but additionally shared his frustration.

“I know I can score 25 goals in this league no problem,” he advised the coach.

Over the approaching months, the ahead proved prophetic. And in the center of what would find yourself being a 35-goal season for Koehler, Hurricanes middle Rod Brind’Amour went down with a groin damage. Carolina’s prospect pool was skinny, and common supervisor Jim Rutherford and assistant Jason Karmanos went to a Cyclones recreation on Dec. 28, 2000, to guage Craig MacDonald and Koehler, who had good fingers and was additionally prepared to battle opponents.

One of the 2 was developing.

After the Cyclones recreation, a 6-1 win, a Cincinnati coach advised Koehler to pack his luggage. Smith then referred to as him into his workplace and advised him the information. He was going to the NHL. Ecstasy rushed by means of Koehler’s physique.

“I don’t think it was because of my good behavior,” he jokes now.

The workforce supplied him with a shuttle service from Cincinnati to Columbus, and the following night time he walked into the plain, spacious guests dressing room in Nationwide Arena. He discovered his stall and pulled a crimson Hurricanes street sweater over his head. He’d made it.

During warmups, Koehler skated with no helmet, letting the air fly by means of his hair as he took in his environment. He hoped he’d have the ability to settle his nerves early in the sport, maybe by getting concerned in a scrum or laying a giant hit. Twirling across the Hurricanes finish of the rink, he felt quicker than regular. Like an NHLer.

Luke DeCock, then a 26-year-old beat author for the Raleigh News & Observer, watched from the press field as Carolina’s Jeff O’Neill gained the opening faceoff towards Geoff Sanderson. Even now, the sport stays contemporary in his thoughts.

“The game that Greg Koehler got called up and played a shift in, is still — 23 years later — one of the strangest games I’ve covered,” DeCock says.

Carolina had a sub-.500 document and was struggling to win towards lesser opponents, and DeCock had heard rumors questioning Maurice’s job standing. That wasn’t a recipe for a minor league call-up to get a lot ice time. Plus, Maurice didn’t play his fourth line a lot, even when his job was safe.

“There was so much pressure every night for them to win because they needed those points,” says Willis, who additionally struggled to get enjoying time when Maurice first referred to as him up.

Koehler anticipated “somewhat of a regular shift” in his debut, however that doubtless wasn’t going to be in the playing cards with the best way Maurice coached. The means the sport unfolded led to even much less alternative. The two groups dedicated a mixed 56 minutes of penalties, and Koehler wasn’t on Carolina’s energy play or its penalty kill unit. The Hurricanes dedicated 11 minor penalties in the 3-1 loss, and O’Neill took a 10-minute misconduct for screaming at referee Kelly Sutherland. Maurice was so indignant on the officiating that he pretended to not bear in mind Sutherland’s identify postgame.

Koehler bought misplaced in the chaos.

Rutherford didn’t find yourself firing Maurice that night time, and the Hurricanes pulled themselves collectively, getting no less than a degree in their subsequent 9 video games and ultimately making the playoffs. Koehler dressed for warmups in no less than one of many workforce’s subsequent two video games — he remembers Tampa Bay goalie Kevin Weekes, whom he knew from minor hockey in the Toronto space, congratulating him at middle ice — however didn’t get into the lineup once more. Carolina despatched him again to Cincinnati on Jan. 6, 2001.

“I wish (Maurice) would have given me maybe a little bit more opportunity,” Koehler says. “But I don’t have any bitter pills or bitterness about it. There obviously was a reason for it. I just don’t know what the reason was, but I never probably will. And that’s fine.”

Koehler’s path crossed with a number of notable hockey figures. Francis, who drew the hook that despatched Koehler to the bench, is the fifth-leading scorer of all time and now runs the Kraken as common supervisor. Brind’Amour, whose damage led to Koehler’s call-up, captained Carolina to a 2006 Stanley Cup victory and now coaches the workforce. Maurice is the sixth-winningest coach in NHL historical past and led the Panthers to a Stanley Cup Final berth over the summer season. Rutherford, now the Canucks president of hockey operations, has gained three Stanley Cups as an govt.

Francis and Rutherford are already in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and there’s a world in which Maurice and Brind’Amour be part of them. Their reminiscences of Koehler range. Francis acknowledged the identify, and Rutherford stated he couldn’t recall sufficient to reply questions concerning the ahead. Reminded of the circumstances across the recreation, he laughed.

“That’s probably why I don’t remember it,” he says. “Because I don’t want to remember it.”

“I ruined his career, did I?” Francis says when advised of the hooking penalty.

“He only played one game?” says Brind’Amour, who remembers Koehler.

Only one recreation. Only one shift. “A glimpse, and that was it,” Cathy Koehler says. “Done.”

Over the next years, Koehler bounced across the minors, at one level incomes a call-up with Nashville. He skated in warmups, however the Predators scratched him for the precise recreation. Injuries bit Koehler as he aged. After the 2006-07 season, six years faraway from his recreation with Carolina, his career was completed.

Looking again, Koehler needs he labored more durable in the health club throughout summer season coaching. Other than that, he wouldn’t change a lot. He has nothing unhealthy to say concerning the recreation.

“It gave me a great head start in life,” he says.

Koehler owns barely any bodily artifacts from his lone night in an NHL lineup. He has a photocopy of Hurricanes-Blue Jackets recreation sheet and the reminiscences that got here with it, and that’s about it. He’s not even optimistic the place his jersey is. He believes he may need donated it to UMass-Lowell, not anticipating it could be his just one.

He all the time thought he’d be again.

Nowadays, Koehler is again in the Toronto space, and in addition spends loads of time at an Ontario cottage he purchased along with his signing bonus. He all the time wished to work along with his fingers, so he’s a mechanic putting in and servicing heating and air con items. Wanting rather less put on and tear on his physique, he’s hoping to transition to the gross sales facet in some unspecified time in the future.

“I’m getting older,” he says. “I enjoy what I do, but at the same time, I’d like to use my brain a little more, my knowledge a little more that way than with the tools.”

Koehler has two youngsters: a 17-year-old son, Jaxon, and a 14-year-old daughter, Lilly. They each, after all, play hockey. A number of years again, Lilly was even a youth participant chosen to take the ice earlier than a Maple Leafs recreation. She stood on the ice for the nationwide anthems, proper in entrance of the starters for the opposing workforce — the Carolina Hurricanes, mockingly.

Greg likes to observe Maple Leafs video games and significantly enjoys NHL motion come playoff time. He nonetheless performs males’s league hockey, too. The beer tastes good, he says with fun. It’s chilly.

For Koehler, his love for hockey has been a relentless since he was a boy. At the start of the Dryden documentary, the well-known goalie interviews the teenager in his bed room. Koehler is a good-looking child, with large eyes and a head stuffed with blonde hair. A group of trophies sit behind him.

He’s nervous in entrance of the digicam, trying down between ideas. But he speaks with conviction when discussing his objectives.

“Well,” he says, “I want to be an NHL player when I grow up.”

A hint of a smile crosses his face, as if he’s imagining what that may appear to be, what it could really feel wish to take the ice in an NHL enviornment and skate with the very best gamers in the world. His complete future lies forward of him. He can dream.

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(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic. Photos: Jill Brady / Portland Press Herald by way of Getty Images; Patrick Smith / Getty Images; Getty Images / NHLI)