Sports / NHL — The Cooper Black tallest goalie record is now official. Florida’s 25-year-old rookie skated out alone for the traditional solo lap at PPG Paints Arena on Thursday night, October 22, and needed fewer strides than most to complete it — at 6-foot-9, he had just become the tallest goaltender ever to appear in an NHL regular-season game.
PITTSBURGH — Florida Panthers goaltender Cooper Black made NHL history in his first career start on Thursday, October 22, becoming the tallest goaltender to ever appear in a regular-season game, the Associated Press reported. Listed at 6-foot-9, Black stands two inches taller than the four goaltenders who previously shared the mark — Ben Bishop, Ivan Fedotov, Mads Sogaard and Mikko Koskinen, all listed at 6-foot-7. The NHL’s own public-relations account noted the same milestone, adding that Black also tied 6-foot-9 skaters Zdeno Chara, Curtis Douglas and Matt Rempe as the tallest players in league history at any position.
The debut itself was a hard night’s work rather than a fairytale. Pittsburgh beat Florida 4–0, with Nick Robertson scoring twice and Arturs Silovs making 26 saves for the shutout, Reuters reported. Reuters credited Black with 17 saves in his debut, and Florida was shut out for the first time this season, on the second night of a back-to-back that had opened with a 5–1 loss in Ottawa. Black’s own verdict, via the AP, was disarmingly simple: “It’s cool, right — growing up, all the guys you kind of saw and watched as a kid, even as a goalie. Cool experience to play against the guys. Would have been nicer to win.”
How the tallest goalie in NHL history got here
Black, 25, is from Alpena, Michigan, and started playing hockey at age 8, according to the AP. His height arrived late and fast: he grew five inches between his junior and senior years of high school, shooting from 6-foot-0 to 6-foot-5 — and kept going. He played college hockey at Dartmouth before Florida signed him as an undrafted free agent in 2024, a classic long-odds route for a goaltender nobody drafted. He developed with Florida’s American Hockey League affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, where the AP reported he posted a 25–13–4 record with a 2.47 goals-against average and a .903 save percentage last season; the Checkers’ own recall announcement put his Charlotte career line at 37–19–5 over 62 games, with a 2.40 goals-against average and four shutouts.
The call-up came because Florida needed a goaltender, not a headline. The Panthers recalled Black from Charlotte after starting goaltender Jacob Markstrom went down with a shoulder injury, the AP reported. Panthers head coach Paul Maurice, who has coached every body type the league produces, summed up the development challenge with a grin before the game, via People’s account of the AP report: “That’s a big lad, and he moves like an athlete. A man that size, it takes a long time to grow into that body — I think he’s done,” he added with a laugh.
The debut, save by save
Black was busy and composed early. About two minutes in, he turned aside Pittsburgh defenseman Kris Letang with his blocker on a wrist shot, and he stopped a breakaway by Penguins forward Rickard Rakell, the AP reported. The first goal he allowed carried its own symmetry: it was scored at 15:19 of the first period by Nick Robertson, listed at 5-foot-9 — a full foot shorter than the goaltender he beat to the glove side. Hendrix Lapierre made it 2–0 in the second period, and Evgeni Malkin added a third early in the third before Robertson closed the scoring into an empty net after Florida pulled Black for an extra skater, according to Reuters’ game account. Florida went 0-for-4 on the power play; Pittsburgh went 0-for-3.
Why this matters
Goaltending has been drifting toward size for two decades, and Black is the logical extreme of that drift. A 6-foot-9 goaltender in modern equipment does not merely occupy the net; he changes its geometry. Shooters who build their release around picking corners above a 6-foot-2 goaltender’s shoulders face a target that starts higher, posts that sit further apart relative to the body, and a butterfly that seals the bottom of the net with pads that cover more ice. The four men who held the record before him at 6-foot-7 — Bishop most successfully, with a long career as a starter — proved that very tall goaltenders can play. None of them tested whether the model still works two inches further out on the curve.
The honest counterweight is movement. Every extra inch is leverage a goaltender has to move laterally, fold down and recover, and Maurice’s joke about Black having finally “grown into that body” contains the real scouting question: at 25, after two AHL seasons, his coordination has caught up with his frame — but one debut against a Pittsburgh team that had lost four straight is a debut, not a verdict. His Charlotte numbers (.903 save percentage last season, per the AP) describe a good AHL goaltender, not yet an NHL starter, and that is exactly what Florida needs him to be right now: a credible option while Markstrom heals, on a team playing its second game in two nights on the road.
What happens next
Black’s immediate future is a depth chart, not a record book. Markstrom’s injury opened the door; how long it stays open decides whether Black gets a second and third start to turn a trivia answer into a roster argument. Florida’s schedule will not wait for the story to settle — the Panthers were 5–4 after Thursday’s loss in the season’s early standings traffic, and every point banked in October is one they do not have to chase in March. For the league, meanwhile, the milestone is a marker of where player development is heading: academies now identify and train for size at goaltender earlier than ever, and the tallest-player list Black just joined — shared with Chara, Douglas and Rempe — is likelier to grow than to shrink.
Whatever comes next, the record itself is settled fact: on October 22, 2026, at PPG Paints Arena, the tallest goaltender in the NHL’s 100-plus-year history played his first game. It ended 4–0 against him. Records, unlike debuts, do not require a win.
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Sources: Associated Press (Oct. 22, 2026, via NBC Sports and theScore); Reuters / Field Level Media game account and NHL roundup (Oct. 23, 2026); People (Oct. 23, 2026); Charlotte Checkers recall announcement (Oct. 13, 2026); NHL public relations via ClutchPoints (Oct. 22, 2026).