Hextall's Penalty Minutes Record Is Likely Safe - Forever

Published on January 28th, 2024 3:49 pm EST
Written By: Dave Manuel


If you want to talk about unbreakable NHL records - how about Ron Hextall's record for most penalty minutes by a goaltender?

If you ever watched Ron Hextall play, you knew that he was an absolute ball of aggression in net.

Hextall would skate out of his net and purposely crash into players.

Hextall would hack and slash members of the opposing team.

Hextall would even fight.

In this day and age, goaltenders are protected heavily by the referees and members of their own team.

Touch the goalie and you will pay the price.

It was a different era in the days of Ron Hextall, Billy Smith and Patrick Roy.

These goaltenders would mix it up and invite contact.

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Ron Hextall finished his NHL career with an amazing 569 penalty minutes.

Billy Smith, who was also known for mixing it up, finished with career with the second most penalty minutes for a goaltender (475).

Tom Barrasso is third on the list with 437 penalty minutes, while Ed Belfour is number four with 380 penalty minutes.

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If you want to get an idea as to how ridiculous Hextall's record is, consider this:

Marc-Andre Fleury is the current active leader in goaltender penalty minutes.

Fleury has played over 1,000 NHL games and has just 82 penalty minutes - a fraction of Hextall's total, over a larger number of games.

Unless goaltenders in the NHL suddenly decide to start throwing bodychecks again, Hextall's record is almost certainly safe.