VIDEO: Kaspars Daugavins and the year's most wild shootout attempt

Kaspars Daugavins was a Tuukka Rask toe save away from scoring what would have been a sensational shootout goal. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

By Allan Muir

I don't know all that much about Ottawa's Kaspars Daugavins, but I do know this: the kid has some huge stones.

With a chance to put the Senators up by one in the shootout Monday night, Daugavins decided that tricking things up made a lot more sense than trying to beat Tuukka Rask with a nifty deke or a nasty snipe.

So instead of doing something as mundane like, you know, stick handling, he put the tip of his blade on the puck at center ice and pushed it ringette-style into the Boston zone. He mixed in a spin-o-rama for flair in front of the crease, but the season's most creative shootout attempt ended not in glory, but with a Rask toe save.

Here's the clip:

It's probably a move he's tried a hundred times in practice, but wow, what a crazy decision to work it in with the game on the line against a divisional opponent.

As awesome as it looked, it was a fairly easy bid to stop. As Andy Brickley pointed out on the Boston broadcast, there was no way the puck could be elevated. All Rask had to do was cover the bottom of the net, which he did, setting up David Krejci to clinch the extra point for the B's with a conventional peanut-butter shelf wrister.

Daugavins will have to settle for highlight-reel infamy. And probably a verbal beatdown from coach Paul MacLean.

UPDATE: Turns out Daugavins has done more than work on this trick shot in practice. Check out what happened when he tried it in a 2010 AHL game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dkIXY_5m7Dg