Dan Boyle

latest news about Dan Boyle: Boyle didn’t deserve to be the focus of one of those witty ad satires (History will be made) up on YouTube, the ones that are posted there with such amazing speed.

Boyle didn’t deserve to go into the pantheon of monumental sporting mess-ups, alongside Steve Smith, Donnie Moore, Jim Marshall, Ralph Branca, Fred (Bonehead) Merkel, on and on.

There is no doubt about what Boyle did. Just 51 seconds into overtime, Boyle, attempting to rim the puck around the back boards, instead ripped a high, hard backhand shot past his own goalie, Evgeny Nabokov, and just like that, a dominant 51-shot performance by the San Jose Sharks ended in a 1-0 loss, putting them down 2-1 in their Western Conference playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche.

Instantly, you could see the anguish that moment was causing Boyle, who swung his stick in helpless frustration before skating to the players’ bench and slouching off to the locker room with his stunned teammates.

On the TV, you could see players asking each other what had happened. How had that one gone in, and so forth.

CBC announcers Mark Lee and Kevin Weeks initially spoke of the gamewinner as a freak goal by Ryan O’Reilly. It was only minutes later, after they saw the replay that Mark Lee saw that it was an own goal, on a no-doubt-about-it shot by Boyle.

You have to feel for Boyle, a nice guy and a splendid player who won a Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in 2004, helped Canada win gold at the 2010 Olympics and has been a sparkplug these past two seasons in San Jose.

Now this. A play that lives forever for all the wrong reasons.

You have to feel for the player, just as people felt for Smith after he accidentally banked a shot into his own goal off netminder Grant Fuhr back in ‘86.