Eleven-year-old Nate Smith left NHL stars stunned after he hit a 27-metre wrist shot straight through a gap hardly bigger than the hockey puck.

But four days later, the Minnesota boy who was filling in for his twin brother still doesn’t know if he can claim the $50,000 prize.

“It was pretty incredible,” dad Pat Smith told the Star Monday morning from Owatonna, Minn., where he, Nate and Nick were camped by the phone hoping for a call from Odds On Promotions, the tournament insurance carrier.

“They play a lot of hockey.”

Nate took the shot at halftime of the Shattuck vs. The World charity game Thursday night because Nick was outside with friends when the ticket with Nick’s name on it was drawn.

His arm just out of a cast, Nate nailed the shot, sending the puck cleanly through a gap only a centimetre higher and wider than the puck itself.

“I probably couldn’t have done it,” New York Islander Kyle Okposo, one of 37 NHLers at the celebrity tournament, told the Faribault Daily News. “There’s maybe five of us in (the Shattuck locker room) who could have done it. That’s a tough shot.”

When the cheering stopped, the boys “felt bad about the deception,” Pat Smith said. Dad agreed “honesty is the best policy” and they fessed up the next day.

“Legally it has to be the person whose name is on the ticket,” Odds On general manager April Clark told the Star on Monday. “We really are very careful about explaining that it has to be the person.”

An Odds On Promotion human-resources representative will research why Nate took the shot for Nick and make the decision, she said.

“They’re minors, so they didn’t have any identification. We had to go by appearance,” tournament chair Vance Vinar Jr., who didn’t know the Smith boys, told the Star. He wouldn’t comment about whether Nate actually told organizers he was his identical, fractionally taller twin.

With or without the prize money, Nate still has the memories of getting high-fives from some of his NHL heroes and entertaining questions about his own pro career.

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Who does he want to play for? “The Capitals,” because Alex Ovechkin is his favourite player. Nick’s hero is Sidney Crosby, an alumnus of Shattuck-St. Mary’s along with more than a dozen NHLers who turned up for the tournament.

Ever the diplomat, Nick chimes in that there is a Maple Leaf the boys like, too: James Reimer, the goalie. Not that either one of them ever wants to play goal, Mr. Burke.