Cole Perfetti and Winnipeg Jets head coach Scott Arniel reflect on the impact of the Manitoba Miracle goal

When a goal has a name, you know it’s significant. The ‘Golden Goal’ scored by Sidney Crosby to win Olympic gold for Canada in 2010 comes to mind, as does the Game 7, game-tying goal by Cole Perfetti with 2.2 seconds left on the clock—pushing that contest against the Blues into overtime—a moment now known as the ‘Manitoba Miracle.’

Back in May we reflected on it with Perfetti during his end of season media availability. The folks at Sportsnet did a feature on it which saw star players relive the moment. We also chatted with Morgan Barron (here) and Haydn Fleury (here) during the offseason to get their thoughts of being part of something so significant to this province.

It’s day 2 of Jets training camp and it was our first chance to talk to Perfetti since the end of May. In the four months since that Game 7 against the Blues how often has he re-watched that goal and hear about it from friends and family? These questions were posed to him during today’s media availability. Perfetti indicated:

“I didn’t really watch it too many times. I had to watch it back a couple of times, ’cause when people ask, I don’t really remember it, because I think I was just so excited and kinda blacking out in the emotion of everything. I didn’t really remember exactly how it felt. But re-watching it kinda reminded me.

But yeah, lots of people back home—it was really cool to go back into the Derm region outside of Toronto—and people ask about it, and they’re all Leafs fans. And to be asking about that and recognizing that I scored that goal was really cool to kinda have that.

I guess I didn’t recognize right away how big of a goal it was in terms of that kind of stuff until over the summer and coming back to Winnipeg. You’re going to the grocery store or you’re coming—wherever it is—and people, first thing they say is, ‘What a goal.’ They always just say like, ‘They’ll never forget that for the rest of their lives.’

It was right place/right time. Just lucky to be in that opportunity and spot, and fortunate that it went in and we got to continue our season.”

Head coach Scott Arniel was also asked about what sort of impact it could have on the Ontario product. He saw it more as a reward for a player who was doing all the little things right but just not finding the back of the net. Arniel shared this on the goal:

“..that goal at the end. That was all ’cause of how he built his game over the course of the 82 games. When we got into those games in those playoffs and we needed him—when we went back and looked at a lot of that St. Louis series—he didn’t score early, but he was one of our best forwards, both in our building but also in St. Louis. He was one of our leaders for scoring chances but couldn’t get it to go. And man, oh man, he waited until the right time to find the goal to score.

I’ve said it a couple of times this summer. I’ve got some goals in my head—obviously the ’72 with Paul Henderson, the Golden Goal with Crosby, Bobby Orr’s goal. To me, in my career, that’s right near the very, very top. That goal, the timing of it and all that, obviously gave us a chance to go on in the overtime and win that hockey game.”

That’s some pretty lofty company from someone like Arniel who has been in the business of hockey since the late 70s.

Of course Perfetti is still hoping to add more highlights to his reel:

“I’d love to, it’ll be hard to top that one. But I’m hoping we can do something special this year.”

I suspect Manitobans would happily give a Stanley Cup winning goal off his stick a cool moniker along the lines of the Manitoba Miracle.