[Ed. Note: Some lists chronicle the best in hockey. Others the worst. Others the most memorable or greatest or essential. What Puck Daddy’s 2016 Summer Series seeks to do is capture those indefinable, quirky, oddities that occur every season. Moments that defy prediction or, in some cases, logical explanation. Welcome to WEIRD NHL.]

By: Chris Ostrander of Two in the Box

#1) The Butt Goal

In reality you could probably cobble together a list of 15 really strange moments from the last 45 years of Sabres history. You don’t have to look past the team’s uniform history to find some strange and downright bad choices.

Through the years Sabres fans have seen phantom goals, fog goals (more on that later) and on December 23, 2013, we got a Butt Goal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAOKAkEN7SI

Mike Smith’s, um, let’s say assist on Mark Pysyk’s overtime tally wound up as an early Christmas present for Buffalo’s faithful in a season that would turn out to be quite a drag as the Sabres plodded towards a 30th place finish.

Maybe somewhere it’s written that strange things need to happen when the Coyotes roll into Buffalo as a little over a year later fans were torn on which team to root for in the height of McDavid mania. Luckily that turned out alright in the end. But as weird as the 2015 Sabres-Coyotes showdown was, it couldn’t top Butt Goal on this list.

Million to one shot, doc. Million to one.

#2) The Collapse of the Marine Midland Arena Jumbotron.

Less than two months after Marine Midland Arena opened, the multi-million dollar Jumbotron fell to the ice prior to Buffalo’s game against Boston on November 16. The 20-ton scoreboard left a smallish mess on the ice surface and it was sometime before a replacement was installed.

Via Reddit More

As you may expect, the scheduled game against the Bruins was postponed and replayed later in the year. The lack of a fancy scoreboard to go along with the sparkling new arena was an odd juxtaposition as the team awaited the replacement. The lasting memory of this event is the iconic photo of the crumpled Jumbotron with the final two panels still dangling from the roof.

#3) Jim Lorentz & The Fog Game

Game three of the 1975 Stanley Cup Final was odd for a couple of reasons. The Fog Game, as it’s come to be known colloquially, remains an iconic Stanley Cup moment thanks to the dense fog that plagued the game for almost the entire contest.

Due to high heat and humidity both outside and inside the arena, fog descended on the ice surface for most of the game. The thick fog forced stoppages to try and clear the ice but to little avail; it’s front and center for Rene Robert’s overtime winning goal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuX-MVmLA2c

As weird as it is to have played a Stanley Cup Final game through a soupy fog, Jim Lorentz had an odd run in of his own earlier in the night. As the game began, a bat began flying around the arena and eventually began taking runs at the players on the ice.

Prior to a faceoff, Lorentz picked the bat out of mid-air with his stick, killing it on the spot. Depending on how superstitious you are the bat’s death either triggered the fog that descended later in the game or even was the cause of Buffalo’s defeat in the series. Or both.

(Analytics tells me that the bat was responsible for both of those events as superstitions are, in fact, real things.)

#4) Blue Ice & Arched Nets

Via Wikipedia More