Impact. Accuracy. Originality.
These are the factors we must consider when it comes to fans throwing items on the ice at hockey games — and whoever is behind Tuesday’s third-period nacho toss at a game between the Edmonton Oilers and Washington Capitals gets 10s across the board.
A quick breakdown:
• It actually affected the game. Oilers winger Corey Perry, with the tray riding shotgun, beat Capitals goalie Logan Thompson with a one-timer from the top of the circle. The nachos were waiting for Perry on his way up ice, but he didn’t hit them — and neither did the puck.
In the moment, Capitals goalie Logan Thompson and coach Spencer Carbery both tried to argue their case. No dice. Afterward, Carbery took the blame for losing his concentration, but the sequence clearly threw him off his game.
• It didn’t affect the game too much. The tray landed right-side up. If the cheese splatters and chips get in the way of the puck, odds are the play is blown dead. Elite anticipation by the culprit.
• It gave us something new. In the lengthy history of the genre, at least at the NHL level, nachos have somehow stayed in their seats, among those who purchase and consume them.
“That’s a first,” Carbery said. “We just talked about that in the coaches’ office, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a nachos-on-the-ice National Hockey League game. We were saying, ‘Did they save them? Maybe we can bring them into the locker room.’”
Now, nachos can take their place in the hall of (theoretically) edible stuff to wind up on the ice. Put it somewhere between the Alberta beef we last saw in Edmonton during the 2024 playoffs and the catfish a Nashville Predators fan smuggled into the 2017 Stanley Cup Final. Hamburgers, hot dogs, waffles and octopi are all, of course, on the list.
The closest comparable, though, might be the live chicken a Los Angeles Kings fan threw on the ice at the Great Western Forum back in 1988. Play continued for more than a minute.
The bird was fine; the chips were not.
(Photo: Paul Swanson / NHLI via Getty Images)
