Who had the worst playoff game ever?

I don’t know. You don’t either. I’m not sure the question even has an answer, because “worst game” is such a subjective category. We’re looking for performances here – i.e. not factoring in injury or tragedy, because come on – but even that’s still pretty broad.

But if I know hockey fans, I know there’s not much we love more than reliving terrible games. So as we make our way to the midpoint of the first round, let’s look back and see if we can conjure up some miserable memories while hoping your favorite team doesn’t add anyone to the list in the coming days and weeks.

Let’s remember some sighs.

But first: What even is a bad game?

It’s tough to define, right? The most obvious answer is that as fans, we know a bad game when we see it. But that criteria can shift under the circumstances.

I’ll give you a few of my own examples. While I keep it fairly well hidden , I’m a Maple Leafs fan. There are two playoff games, both from the Pat Quinn era, that have always stuck with me as an example of a player having a rotten evening. The first came in Game 7 against the Islanders in 2002, when the injury-riddled Leafs dressed a 26-year-old rookie winger named Paul Healey. He took one shift early in the first period, took a minor penalty, and then watched from the box as the Islanders scored on the power play. He didn’t see the ice again, finishing the night with 42 seconds of playing time . Not great!

Maybe worse: Bryan McCabe’s nightmare game against the Flyers two years later, in which he went minus-5 while making plays like the one below. It got to the point where every time the Flyers scored, which was often, you just looked for No. 24 to come gliding into view.

McCabe played 25 minutes that night, or just over 24 more than Healey. But both guys had miserable games, the kind they’d probably rather forget ever playing in. And those are just the ones stuck in my broken Leafs fan mind. Surely there have been far worse. We just have to figure out how to look for them.

The minuses

Plus/minus is a bad stat, as you no doubt know if you’ve ever made the mistake of mentioning it in front of an analytics guy who’s still screaming at you from the bottom of your driveway to this day. But it’s bad because it’s so noisy, and the thing with noisy numbers is that they still hold value at the extremes.

We’ve already seen McCabe’s minus-5. Was that the worst single-game score ever? No. But as it turns out, it wasn’t far off. The record for the worst plus/minus in a playoff game is a minus-6, held by 14 different guys.

That list includes some darn good players, by the way, including Selke winners Bobby Clarke ( against the Rangers in 1979 ) and Doug Gilmour ( against the Kings in 1990 ). Former Conn Smythe winner Reggie Leach did it in the same game that Clarke did. Jets legend Thomas Steen once found himself sitting at minus-6 in the third period of a playoff game against the Oilers and was apparently so embarrassed that he got himself thrown out for fighting Paul Coffey, kind of .

Some of the other names aren’t as well known, like Steen’s linemate for that game, Bengt Lundholm. Defenseman Kevin Dahl joined the club as a rookie in 1993 . Rick Chartraw did it in 1981 . And the defense pairing of Brad Maxwell and Lars Lindgren both hit the mark in a 1985 game against the Oilers . Maxwell makes a solid claim for “worst ever” in that game, as he also took three minor penalties in the first period. The mid-’80s Oilers power play wasn’t very good, right?

If you’re looking for company for McCabe in the minus-5 club, there are 34 more names, including Chris Pronger, Mats Sundin, Dale Hawerchuk, Chris Kunitz and Brayden Point . That’s an important reminder: Even good players can have miserable nights. And for more proof, look no further than the Nashville pairing of Roman Josi and Shea Weber, who were on the ice for all five goals against in a 5-0 Game 7 loss back in 2016 .

As The Athletic ’s Arpon Basu kindly reminded me, this ended up being Weber’s last game as a Predator. Woof.

The zeroes

The plus/minus column gives us a starting point, but it hardly tells the whole story when it comes to finding the worst game ever. Reggie Leach scored a goal in his minus-6 game, so how bad could he have really been? Kunitz managed to score two when he was minus-5 , because that whole series was just weird. Steen, Hawerchuk and Point all had assists in their nightmare games. And even if you’re not getting points, you can at least produce chances. Maxwell somehow bombed a half-dozen shots in between fishing the puck out of his own net. His deserve-to-win-o-meter was probably off the charts.

What about the players who didn’t do … anything?

If we set the other stats to zero, the name that jumps out is another Hall of Famer: Joey Mullen. Back in 1990, in the same 12-4 loss that saw Gilmour put up a minus-6, Mullen did it too. But that dreaded minus-6 was his only number for the night. He didn’t have a point, didn’t have a shot and didn’t even get a penalty minute. Nothing to even indicate he played that night, other than that he was constantly on the ice for goals against.

Other members of the minus-and-all-zeroes club include Harold Snepsts against the Blackhawks in 1990 (when he was a minus-5 with nothing else), Brian Leetch with the Leafs in the McCabe game (minus-4 and nothing else), and Mullen again with the Penguins in 1995 (when his only stat was a minus-4).

Maybe the worst of the bunch came just a year ago, when Florida ’s Zac Dalpe was a minus-5 with no other numbers in just 10 shifts and 6 minutes, 11 seconds of ice time . To make matters worse, that nightmare game came in the Stanley Cup Final and was in fact the 9-3 loss that eliminated the Panthers. There’s a good case that that’s the worst game we’ve seen so far.

Then again, we’re treating players with a zero in the PIM column like it’s a bad thing, but penalties hurt your team. If we treat PIMs like a negative, then we can find two players who were a minus-4, had no shots, but spent time in the penalty box. One is current Ducks GM Pat Verbeek, who racked up six minutes when he took a double-minor for roughing and a holding penalty during a 1988 Devils/Bruins conference final that’s probably best remembered for being the game after Yellow Sunday .

But Verbeek falls just shy of the category’s penalty leader, Willi Plett. The Flames tough guy somehow managed to be on the ice enough to post a minus-4 against the Flyers in a 1981 game despite racking up 31 PIM and getting ejected midway through the second period.

By the way, Plett stuck around long enough to eventually make his way to the Bruins for his final NHL season in 1988, when one of the last games of his career saw him in the lineup for the Pat Verbeek game. This means something. I do not know what.

Under the circumstances

Just about all of the games we’ve been mentioning so far have been blowouts. And sure, if your team loses 10-1, you probably had a pretty bad game. But so did all your teammates, so maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. What about the players who had terrible nights in a game that their team could have won with just a little more help?

Let’s go back to the list of the big minuses. Every member of the playoff minus-6 club had their meltdown in a game their team lost by at least five goals. For the minus-5 brigade, the gap was always at least three. What about a close game?

As it turns out, plenty of players have gone minus-4 in a game their team lost by a single goal, which has to be especially painful. The list includes some fun names like Vincent Damphousse (for San Jose , against Dallas in 2000 ), Steve Larmer (as a Ranger, against the Nordiques in 1995 ) and Pierre Turgeon twice, over a decade apart, in 1988 and 1999 . Shawn Horcoff did it for the Oilers in Game 1 of the 2006 final . Even the greatest defensive winger of all time had it happen, as Montreal’s Bob Gainey joined the club against the hated Bruins in 1985 .

Let’s make it even worse. What if we look for guys who were minus-4 in a game their team lost 4-3? That list includes names like Roman Hamrlik and Daniel Sedin . Twist the knife even further and look for 4-3 overtime losses, and you conjure up nightmare games for John Carlson , Adam Larsson and Kris Letang , plus former Selke winners Steve Kasper and Kris Draper .

And because I know you’re wondering: Yes, a few players have somehow managed to be minus-4 in a playoff win . The most recent was Colorado ’s Josh Manson , in that wild 8-6 win over the Oilers two years ago. Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov both did it for San Jose in the same 5-4 in over the Flames , the only time it’s happened in an overtime game. And North Stars defenseman Craig Hartsburg went Full Lebda back in 1981, going minus-4 in a playoff game that his team won by three goals . Oh, and he was also in the penalty box for the opening goal, less than one minute into the game. Solid work all around.

The goalies

I’ve kept them out of it until now, but yes, we need to talk about the single player on either team who can do the most to ensure victory or defeat. The poor goalie, who can’t make a mistake at work without a red light going off and a horn blasting in his ear. They have tough jobs, but who could claim to have the worst night of anyone?

Luckily, we’re done with plus/minus here. Instead, we can start our search by simply asking which goalies have given up the most goals in a single playoff game.

Three goalies have hit double-digits, although two come with asterisks: Paul Bibeault and Frank McCool both did it during the war years, which was a very different time in the NHL. (If McCool’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he gave up a 10-spot to the Habs just two games before he started a run of three straight shutouts in the final, which still stands as a record.) Our lone modern victim is Chicago’s Murray Bannerman, who was allowed to go the distance in a 10-5 loss to the Oilers in the 1985 Campbell final. That’s a solid place to plant our flag, but let’s see what else we can find.

It feels like we should consider shots against here, not just goals allowed. For what it’s worth, Bannerman faced 51 shots that night in Edmonton, meaning he still finished with a percentage north of .800. That’s not great, but it’s not even among the 100 worst save percentages by a goalie who gave up seven goals or more in a playoff game. That list includes some memorable stinkers like Roberto Luongo giving up eight goals on 38 shots against the Bruins in the 2011 final , Ron Hextall giving up nine on just 26 shots against the 1989 Penguins , and Andrei Vasilevskiy giving up seven on 37 against the Leafs just last year . Yes, Alexander Georgiev against the Jets on Sunday makes it, too. But none of them can top Calgary’s Jeff Reese, who gave up eight goals on just 18 shots in a series-ending loss to the Kings in 1993 , making for a tidy save percentage of .556 on the night.

Of course, that list only works for goalies who were allowed to stick around long enough to get shelled. Most awful playoff goalies get pulled before that, which is where you’d see memorable Game 7 meltdowns like Patrick Roy’s career low against the Red Wings in 2002 (six goals allowed on 16 shots) or Patrick Lalime’s one-period debacle against the Maple Leafs in 2004 (three goals on 11 shots).

And then there’s quite possibly the worst start in playoff history: Mike Liut’s effort for the Blues against the Hawks in the 1982 Norris final. He faced three shots, didn’t stop even one, and was pulled for Glen Hanlon 3:01 into a game his team ultimately lost 6-5 . It’s the most goals ever allowed in a playoff game without making a single save.

Your picks

Knowing that numbers can only tell you a small part of the story when it comes to true misery, I turned to you guys for some nominations. You did not disappoint.

For example, here’s a reminder that a single moment can shoot a player to the top of the list.

Sharks fan. Dan Boyle's own goal in the series against Colorado in 2010. That moment and Thornton tearing up on the ice after the reverse sweep in '14 are burned into my brain. Actually now that I'm thinking about it all my clearest memories of this franchise are sadness.

1993 Finals. Game 2. Marty McSorley. No explanation needed.

In Game 1 of the 2010 Stanley Cup Final Ryan Parent played one shift, fell down, was directly responsible for a goal against, and didn’t play again in the series. Definitely not the most consequentially bad, but tough to think of someone more *efficiently* bad.

And of course, there were a ton of goalie nominations. I’m not sure who this guy is, but he really carries a grudge.

And many more. Feel free to browse through hundreds of miserable responses right here . And since I know you have some of your own, now’s the time to hit the comment section and let us hear about them.