The Sabres First Goal

The Sabres first game of the 2013 NHL season took place yesterday and I would like to take a minute to describe the physics involved in the very first goal. The Sabres were in the Philadelphia zone and the Ott, the newest player on the team was left alone about 25 feet away from the goal. The puck came towards him, away from the goal and he took a one time slapshot to beat the Flyer's goalie. The physics here is pretty obvious. If we say that going towards the goal is the positive direction, then the puck had an initial negative velocity and therefore a negative momentum. Then, using his stick as a lever and his hand as a pivot point, he applied a torque to the stick and then a force to the puck. The collision was elastic, and while coming towards Ott the puck was moving pretty slowly, but after contact with the large positive momentum of the stick, the puck goes in the opposite direction with a much larger velocity, after recieving a large impulse from the stick. Obviously all of this was going through his head when he shot the puck and therefore scored the first goal of the Sabres season.

Go Sabres