In last Saturday night’s Georgia/Buffalo game, Swarm goaltender Brett Dobson took a major penalty for high-sticking. It’s a bit unusual for a goalie to take a major penalty but that was less unusual than what happened next: Dobson was sent to the penalty box to serve his own penalty. Social media went bananas with people wondering if a rule had changed or if this was par for the course in the NLL. The answers are no and no.

The 2026 rule book is a bit unclear on what should happen in this case. Rule 37 is called Minor Penalties, and 37.1 explicitly says:

For a “Minor Penalty”, any player (except the goalie) shall be ruled off the floor for two (2) minutes.

Rule 38.4 is called “Goalie Misconduct” and says that when a goalie is given a 10-minute misconduct penalty, the in-home must serve the penalty. If the goalie is given a minor and a misconduct, the in-home serves the misconduct and another player serves the minor.

So it’s explicit on what should happen if the goalie takes a minor or misconduct penalty. In neither case does the goalie serve the penalty himself. But what about a major penalty?

Rule 38 is called Major Penalties. As an aside, I don’t know why the “Goalie Misconduct” rule I mentioned above is part of the “Major Penalties” rule and not the “Definition of Misconduct Penalties” rule, which is Rule 39. But regardless, there is no other mention of goaltenders in Rule 38. Since there’s nothing saying a goaltender does not have to serve his own penalty, does that imply that he does? That seems to be the direction the referees went on Saturday.

Brett Dobson (Photo credit: Trevor MacMillan)

On April 6, 2025, less than eight months ago, the Rock played in Las Vegas. Desert Dogs goalie Landon Kells took a major penalty at 14:45 of the fourth quarter. The in-home was sent to the penalty box while Kells remained on the floor. The game went to overtime and Jack Hannah scored a minute in to give Vegas the win. Not only did Kells not serve the penalty, he got the win because he was in the net when the winning goal (shorthanded because of his penalty) was scored.

Also last season, on March 22, Dobson himself received a major dead ball foul penalty in a Swarm game in Vancouver. He did not serve it himself and continued in net.

So we have two games in 2025 where the goalie did NOT serve his own major penalty, and one game in 2026 where he did. But Rule 38 is exactly the same in the 2026 rule book as it is in the 2025 rule book.

Back in the old days, there was an NLL rule saying that goalies had to serve their own major penalties, and I saw it happen. On January 24, 2003, the Bandits played the Rock in Toronto. As he often did, Glenn Clark was running up the floor on a transition breakaway chance, and was looking behind him for the pass from Bob Watson. At the same time, Bandits goalie Corey Quinn came out of his net to prevent the shot. Just as Clark received the pass and was turning around again, Quinn hit him with a devastating check and Clark hit the floor. It was decided that Clark couldn’t possibly have seen it coming, and so Quinn was given a major penalty. He served it himself.

But some time after that happened (I was unable to find out when, but it was a few years), the rule was removed. 27 goalies have received major penalties since detailed stats became available in 2005. There were a lot of people on social media, some of whom I know have been around the league for many years, who said on Saturday that they’d never seen a goalie serve his own penalty. I have to believe that the vast majority of those 27 goalies did not hit the penalty box and so we are forced to wonder why Dobson had to sit.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer.