Michael Rasmussen and the Mt. Rushmore of ineptitude

…But he’s got a great personality.

I don’t really know what the exact excuse was heading into the October 15 clash against the Philadelphia Flyers, but it had to be something along those lines.

No matter how hard you squint, it’s tough to see a hockey reason Rasmussen continued to get rolled out in the lineup playing between 15 to 20 minutes a game. But rolled out he was, and as Prashanth Iyer pointed out, in the midst of a streak of more than 400 minutes without a point, during which the Red Wings scored exactly one goal with him on the ice, in any situation.

That shouldn’t be possible. How was he not waived, or traded, or benched, or sent to Antarctica?

It got me wondering how many other players were given the amount of leeway Rasmussen was given. And if I could find them, were any even more inept than Michael Rasmussen?

What follows is a Mt. Rushmore of four forwards, none of them enforcers, with personalities so great they could go months without a point and face zero repercussions.

The case for Michael Rasmussen

Let’s start with the premise. For those who don’t know (I don’t want to assume everyone is familiar with American landmarks), Mt. Rushmore is a gigantic national memorial carved into a mountain in South Dakota. On it are the granite faces of four of the United States’ most consequential presidents over distinct historical eras.

But in sports, Mt. Rushmore just represents a shortlist of four athletes for a given category. Just as 47 presidencies (45 presidents) were whittled down to four faces, there have been 47 streaks of a forward going 400+ minutes without a point since 1997-98, when the NHL started tracking time on ice. That’s 44 players (Craig Adams did it three times) in 29 seasons, about one and a half a year across the whole league.

What happened to these forwards? Eleven of them changed teams mid-streak, so they’re out. Sixteen were sent to the AHL during a season their streak touched, so they’re out. Twelve never played another NHL game after the season their streak ended. Nine of those at least broke the streak before their last game; the other three (Raitis Ivanans, Darroll Powe and Justin Abdelkader) went pointless straight into retirement. Michael Rasmussen is most likely going to play next season for some team, so they’re all out. The groups overlap, and once you clear them, 19 of the 47 streaks are left.

Four of the 47 are Red Wings, and that’s depressing. Justin Abdelkader and Kirk Maltby are part of the “career ended the same year as their streak ended” group. I’ll save the other Red Wing for later.

Six of those 19 averaged more than 13 minutes a night while it was happening. Two of them, Rob Niedermayer and Michael Grabner, only lasted 25 and 27 games, so I gave the faces to the four longest by games. And of the ones MoneyPuck can measure (its game files start in 2008-09, so Svartvadet’s out), only Rasmussen was on the ice for fewer than five goals. Glendening and Grabner were out there for five, Lewis for six.

Michael Rasmussen deserves to have his drought etched into hockey history. Put that beautiful face on a 60-foot slab of granite. You’re on Mt. Rushmore!

The case for the other three

Remember that mystery Red Wings player I mentioned earlier? He makes Rasmussen’s streak look like a short, leisurely stroll. What’s worse than 417 minutes without a point? How about 615 minutes in 41 games at 15 minutes per game?

If you guessed Luke Glendening, you’re a true fan. You stuck through the trough of the rebuild that is still rebuilding. He managed most of the feat in 2019-20 (I’m counting: 28 games and 446 of the 615 minutes) on a Red Wings team that finished with 39 points in 71 games and scored 142 goals, 35 fewer than anyone else in the league. The last 13 games came in 2020-21, when Detroit was merely the fifth-worst team in hockey with the second-fewest goals.

There was still a team-level reason to keep trotting out Glendening on a nightly basis. He was seen as a defensive specialist and an above-average penalty-killing center, even though Detroit was outscored 44-5 with him on the ice during the streak, the worst goal differential of all 47. Rasmussen is not that guy. He has the body to be physical, but he dished out a paltry 39 hits over the course of his drought, 5.6 per 60 minutes, with no hits at all in 11 of the 31 games. That isn’t a slump, either: he had 40 hits in the 39 games before it.

For context, Glendening averaged 6.4 hits per 60 during his streak, less than one more than Rasmussen, so even he wasn’t exactly punishing people. You know who makes both of them look gentle? Marco Kasper. A smaller-framed forward who threw 91 hits in the same 39 Red Wings games, 9.8 per 60, nearly double Rasmussen’s rate.

The Red Wings saw the writing on the wall, and at the end of the 2020-21 season they let Glendening walk into unrestricted free agency, where Dallas gave him two years at $1.5 million. He may as well have kept on walking to South Dakota, because he’s also on Mt. Rushmore.

Our next player had the same scouting report as Glendening: real minutes because of his role on the PK. I know you’re all thinking it. Per Svartvadet of the Atlanta Thrashers. What a memorable stretch, from March 2001 into the following November. It took him 32 games to rack up 462 pointless minutes, and Atlanta dressed him for all but one of them. He’s only on the list because he stuck around Atlanta for two more seasons after the streak ended before going home to Sweden.

It was a good move because he went on to win the Swedish MVP in 2007. But before that, he too took a detour in South Dakota. Both his streak and the Atlanta Thrashers deserve to be commemorated on this list. Welcome to Mt. Rushmore.

Our final player was a key contributor to a good team. Again, defense was his calling card. His streak spanned two seasons, from April 2013 to December 2013: 29 games and 404 minutes without a point. Six months after it ended, he lifted Lord Stanley’s Cup for the second time in three years. Trevor Lewis, congratulations. You brought a smidgen of success to our Mt. Rushmore.

So what happened on October 15?

Naturally, the moment word got out about Michael Rasmussen’s drought, he recorded an assist, the primary on Andrew Copp’s game-winner. And then the next game on October 17, he recorded another assist. Don’t look now, but Michael Rasmussen’s on a scoring streak.

Who knows when he will score a goal, but let’s celebrate the little things. Michael Rasmussen’s legacy is still yet to be written, but January 2026 to October 2026 will be recorded in history as perhaps the most inept streak from a forward in the last 30 years.