ZURICH – Some hockey fans might have asked the following question after the ZSC Lions’ historic 5-0 Champions Hockey League win against Metallurg Magnitogorsk: “Who gets to keep the goal pucks?”

The answer is that they are safely stored at the IIHF office in Zurich and will be saved as part of an IIHF and Hockey Hall of Fame program that preserves important artifacts in hockey history.

The historic pucks that were collected on Wednesday night in front of 6,200 fans at the sold-out Diners Club Arena in Rapperswil-Jona are:

1-0 Blaine Down
2-0 Peter Sejna
3-0 Mathias Seger
4-0 Jan Alston
5-0 Jean-Guy Trudel

Five different scorers representing three nations (Canada, Slovakia and Switzerland) provided one of the biggest upsets in international club hockey history, likely the biggest since Austria’s Feldkirch won the European Hockey League title in 1998.

The IIHF saves goal pucks from all major gold-medal games and the CHL final was no exception. The four-man, all-Finnish officiating crew was instructed to collect each puck after a goal and keep them at the score-keeper’s bench.

Once safely deposited, another official marked each puck with white tape and recorded the name of the goal scorer and the goal he scored.

For over a decade, the IIHF has worked with the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto whose mandate is to preserve the history of the game. Most of the time, collected artifacts, like goal pucks, game-used sticks and game-worn sweaters are sent to the HHOF and put on display in the Hall’s international wing.

How the five pucks from the January 28 final will be used has not yet been decided, but each season the Hockey Hall installs a retrospective of the previous year, and this could be one use for the pucks.

“We will first contact our partners at the Hockey Hall of Fame and see what they want,” said IIHF Communication Director Szymon Szemberg, who also is the secretary of the IIHF History Committee, which oversees the partnership.

“Maybe all of the pucks will be shipped to Toronto and put on display to commemorate the first CHL final, but we may also divide them between the Hall, our CHL marketing partner Ovation Sport, and the IIHF. Perhaps one puck will go to the ZSC Lions,” said Szemberg.

“We have not yet had the time to think this over, but we may put one of the pucks on auction among ZSC fans, with the proceeds going to charity. It all depends on how successful we think an auction like that would be.”

IIHF.com staff