As reported by Alex Thomas of The Sports Daily on Friday, former National Hockey League of Pardubice, Czech Republic retired at the age of 36. Hemsky only scored 174 goals with the Edmonton Oilers, Dallas Stars, and Ottawa Senators from 2002 to 2017, but there is one goal that stands out over all of the others.
On January 4, 2007, the Oilers were hosting the Stars at Rexall Place. The Stars had always had the Oilers number over the previous decade. Six times from 1997 to 2003, the Stars and Oilers played against each other in the Stanley Cup Playoffs with the Stars winning five playoff series.
In this game in Edmonton, it was a high scoring contest. The Oilers had a 2-0 lead after the first period and were leading 4-1 midway through the second period. That is when the Stars scored four consecutive goals to take a 5-4 lead.
With nine seconds left, Stars center Patrik Stefan was stickhandling the puck towards an empty net after taking the puck away from Oilers defenseman Marc-Andre Bergeron. However, in complete disbelief, Stefan fell and misplayed the puck. Jarrett Stoll then picked up the puck for the Oilers and delivered a deep cross-ice pass to Petr Sykora.
Sykora moved the puck up towards Ryan Smyth, who made an unbelievable attempt to keep the play going. Smyth had a marvelous backhand pass to Hemsky, who found himself on a breakaway right in front of the Stars net. Hemsky would score on Stars goaltender Marty Turco to tie the game at 5 at the 19:58 mark of the third period and with only two seconds left in regulation.
The Stars did go on to win the game 6-5 thanks to two shootout goals by Jussi Jokinen and Sergei Zubov. However, the fact the Oilers were able to salvage a single point in this contest was simply beyond remarkable.
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