Vancouver Canucks Goalie Says There Was No Fart, Just Skate

An unusually high number of people paid attention to the woeful Vancouver Canucks last week, when their game against the Tampa Bay Lightning was temporarily disrupted by something that sounded a lot like a fart. This week brought more clarity on what generated that sound: While it did come from a human, it did not involve a butt.

First, let's hear it one more time:

Wonderful. On Monday, David Quadrelli of CanucksArmy did some laudable reporting to track down the answer. Canucks play-by-play broadcaster John Stackhouse, who at the time jokingly asked his partner John Garrett if he made the noise, played coy when questioned by Quadrelli. (As CJ Fogler pointed out to me last week, the noise was also audible on the ESPN+ broadcast, meaning that the two Johns were exonerated.) The reporter then went to Vancouver goaltender Collin Delia, who gave up the answer without much interrogation:

Delia didn’t even need us to show him the clip to know what we were talking about.

“It was my skate,” Delia told CanucksArmy. “The one-piece skate.”

Spencer Martin overheard this conversation and wanted to jump in to offer up more information. “It’s the one piece skate!” Martin said with a laugh. “We actually talked about it before that game. Him and Demmer [Thatcher Demko] have the fart stop sometimes.”

CanucksArmy

As Quadrelli explains in his article, Delia and Demko wear a type of hockey skate that is built as one piece, with the boot and blade connected, rather than the typical boot with a blade holder. This newer skate tends to be squeakier, so when Delia stopped to collect the puck, he generated a "fart stop."

Loyal readers will recall that in last week's article, my analytical models determined an 11.8 percent chance that this noise was actually a fart. Of course, I am too humble to point out that my calculations were accurate—the conclusion of this saga is representative of the type of rigor and expertise expected from every Defector blog. In the future, if you think you've heard a fart on TV, please let us know at barry@defector.com.

H/t to Michael