{"id":942941,"date":"2026-10-23T05:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T05:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/942941\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T05:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T05:14:09","slug":"panthers-cooper-black-becomes-tallest-goalie-to-play-nhl-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/942941\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers’ Cooper Black becomes tallest goalie to play NHL game"},"content":{"rendered":"

PITTSBURGH \u2014 Florida Panthers<\/a> goalie Cooper Black<\/a> skated onto the PPG Paints Arena ice alone during pre-game warmups on Thursday night, a time-honoured hockey tradition given to rookies everywhere.<\/p>\n

It took Black fewer strides to make the memorable lap than most.<\/p>\n

Call it one of the upsides of being six-foot-nine.<\/p>\n

Black made NHL history in his first career start when he became the tallest goaltender to ever appear in a regular-season game. Black is listed as two inches taller than Ben Bishop, Ivan Fedotov, Mads Sogaard and Mikko Koskinen, all 6-7<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old from Alpen, Michigan, who started playing when he was 8 and had a 5-inch growth spurt between his junior and senior years in high school when he shot up from 6-0 to 6-5 and kept right on going,\u00a0made 18 saves in a 4-0 loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cool right, growing up, all the guys you kind of saw and watched as a kid, even as a goalie,\u201d Black said. “Cool experience to play against the guys, would have been nicer to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black, called up from Florida’s AHL affiliate in Charlotte recently after Jacob Markstrom went down with a shoulder injury, stopped Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Kris Letang with his blocker pad on a wrist shot about two minutes in. He also turned aside a breakaway opportunity by Penguins forward Rickard Rakell before giving up a goal to 5-9 Pittsburgh forward Nick Robertson, who beat Black to the glove side.<\/p>\n

Panthers head coach Paul Maurice praised Black’s development in recent years. Florida signed Black as an undrafted rookie free agent in 2024. Black blossomed last season in Charlotte, posting a 25-13-4 record with a 2.47 goals-against average and a .903 save percentage.<\/p>\n

\u201cA man that size, it takes a long time to grow into that body,\u201d Maurice said with a smile before the game, adding with a laugh, \u201cI think he\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 Florida Panthers goalie Cooper Black skated onto the PPG Paints Arena ice alone during pre-game warmups…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,82],"class_list":["post-942941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}