{"id":250081,"date":"2025-10-30T03:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T03:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/250081\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T03:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T03:31:09","slug":"maple-leafs-john-tavares-scores-career-goal-no-500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/250081\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs&#8217; John Tavares scores career goal No. 500"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/hockey\/nhl\/teams\/toronto-maple-leafs\/\" class=\"sn-team-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-team=\"toronto-maple-leafs\" data-league=\"nhl\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> forward scored his 500th career goal in the third period of Wednesday night\u2019s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for Tavares and his squad, the milestone marker came in a losing effort. He scored with less than five minutes left in the third period \u2014 burying it stick side off a slick backhand pass from Matthew Knies \u2014 to cut Toronto&#8217;s deficit to 6-2 at the time. The Maple Leafs went on to lose 6-3.<\/p>\n<p>Tavares becomes the 49th player in NHL history to hit the 500-mark. He is now tied with former Leaf and Flame Lanny McDonald for 48th on the all-time goal list.<\/p>\n<p>The only previous player to score his 500th goal in a Leafs uniform was Mats Sundin in 2006.<\/p>\n<p>Tavares, 35, is just the fourth NHL player in NHL history to have 500 points with two teams. The others are Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Ron Francis.<\/p>\n<p>Picked first overall by the New York Islanders in the 2009 NHL Draft, Tavares stayed on Long Island until returning to his hometown Leafs in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The native of Oakville, Ont. has 1,127 career points (500 goals, 627 assists) in 1,194 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Maple Leafs forward scored his 500th career goal in the third period of Wednesday night\u2019s game&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-250081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}