When you see a hockey team playing without a goalie, the net isn’t unguarded by accident. The coach has deliberately “pulled” the goaltender and sent an extra skater onto the ice. It’s a calculated gamble: trade your last line of defense for an additional attacker, giving your team a temporary 6-on-5 advantage. Teams do this when they’re trailing late in a game and need a goal to survive.
How the Extra Attacker Strategy Works
Hockey is played with six players per side: five skaters and one goaltender. When a coach pulls the goalie, that goaltender skates to the bench and a sixth skater hops on. The team now has six attackers against the opponent’s five skaters and goalie. The math is simple: more offensive players means more passing options, more shots, and more pressure in the attacking zone.
For this to make any sense, the trailing team has to score at a higher rate playing 6-on-5 than they would at even strength with both goalies in net. They do. The extra skater creates enough offensive firepower to meaningfully boost scoring chances. The tradeoff is an empty net roughly 200 feet away that the opposing team can shoot at from anywhere.
There’s also a less obvious benefit. Research from Simon Fraser University found that having an extra attacker on the ice tends to draw more penalties against the defending team. Players protecting a lead against six attackers are more likely to commit infractions. So pulling the goalie doesn’t just increase scoring rates directly; it also increases the odds of getting a power play, which is an even better scoring opportunity.
When Coaches Pull the Goalie
The most common scenario is when a team trails by one goal in the final minutes of the third period. Traditionally, coaches waited until there were about 60 to 90 seconds left. But analytics have pushed that window earlier. Statistical models suggest teams trailing by one goal should pull their goalie with roughly three minutes remaining, sometimes even sooner.
Timing also depends on the game situation. If a trailing team already has a power play (meaning the opponent has a player in the penalty box), coaches should pull the goalie much earlier than they would at even strength. Adding the extra skater during a power play creates a 6-on-4 advantage, which is devastating offensively. In that scenario, teams score a goal roughly every 5.5 minutes of 6-on-4 play. The catch: they also allow an empty-net goal about every 4.8 minutes. It’s a razor-thin edge, but when you’re already losing, the risk is worth it.
You’ll also occasionally see teams pull their goalie when trailing by two goals with very little time left. The logic is the same, just more desperate. Some coaches have even pulled the goalie while already on a two-man power play, creating a 6-on-3 situation to maximize their chances of a quick goal.
The Risks of an Empty Net
The obvious danger is that the opposing team clears the puck down the ice and scores into the empty net. These “empty-net goals” happen frequently enough that you’ll see them in almost every NHL broadcast week. A defender or even a forward can launch the puck from their own zone, and if it slides the length of the ice into the unguarded net, it counts.
But here’s what matters about the math: the trailing team was going to lose anyway. If you’re down a goal with two minutes left and your odds of scoring at even strength are slim, giving up an empty-net goal just changes the final score from a one-goal loss to a two-goal loss. The outcome (a loss) stays the same. Pulling the goalie gives you a real chance at tying it. That’s why coaches accept the risk. They’re not trying to minimize how badly they lose; they’re trying to maximize the chance of earning at least a point.
How Empty-Net Goals Affect Stats
If you’re wondering whether the goalie gets blamed when the other team scores on an empty net, the answer is no. Empty-net goals are not counted against a goaltender’s goals against average or save percentage. The goalie wasn’t on the ice, so it wouldn’t be fair to penalize their stats for a coaching decision. The goal still counts on the scoreboard and is credited to whoever shot the puck, but the goalie’s individual record stays clean.
Where the Strategy Came From
The first coach to ever pull a goalie was Art Ross of the Boston Bruins, who did it on March 26, 1931. During a playoff game against the Montreal Canadiens, Ross yanked goaltender Tiny Thompson in favor of an extra attacker. It was a radical idea at the time. Nearly a century later, it’s become one of hockey’s most routine late-game tactics, used in virtually every close game across every level of the sport. The only thing that’s changed is how aggressively coaches deploy it, with data pushing them to act earlier and more often than Ross ever would have imagined.