EckerNet.Com

Ok he almost certainly didn\’t do it intentionally, but he sure caused them a great deal of pain.

The Illinois Lottery officially started a new promotion with the Chicago Blackhawks last Wednesday: One adult fan would be randomly chosen at each home game, and if the Blackhawks scored at exactly the 10-minute mark of the second period — not a second over or under — then that fan would win $1 million.

Just five days later, someone sitting in Section 326 had already hit the jackpot.

Minnesota Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom surrendered his only goal, in Monday night\’s 40-save performance at the Blackhawks, to winger Martin Havlat at 10:00 of the second period. (The video of the goal is around the 1:50 mark of this clip; as you\’ll see, the timing was close.)

Isn\’t that just like a Minnesota team??  Seems like Minnesota teams are famous for allowing opponents to score their first ever goal/run/touchdown/etc, or get the record number of goals/yards/runs/etc, or break a huge losing streak, or whatever.  But surely this is a first that a Minnesota player won the lottery for an opponent.

But it gets better, and this is pretty much an \”only in Chicago\” thing.  Typically in the state lottery there is a 1-in-10,179,260 chance of winning.  Nobody bothered to actually check what the odds of something like this happening.  Turns out, they are considerably better…

Greg Esterhai of US Hole In One says the odds of a player scoring a goal at any second in any game is about 1 in 1,000. But Esterhai says that since the promotion is a season-long promotion, the odds go down to about a 1 in 25 chance. He said that this makes the goal promotion more likely to happen over the course of a season than a fan hitting a full court shot in any particular game, which is about a 1 in 50 chance.

So chalk this one up as a \”someone didn\’t do their homework\” mistake