EBUG: The NHL's emergency backup goalie rule

Thats what impressed me too! He seemed very natural addressing the media.

It was certainly said tongue in cheek, but I played in the same men's league that Scott Foster played in at Johnny's Ice House in Chicago and one of our players legitimately was called up to a professional team a week after playing a men's league game.

Granted it was a low level professional team, and he was called up by a previous coach he had played for, but certainly was worth a couple chuckles.

If people got called up all the time that might be a problem. But it'd be impossible to justify the cost of flying extra players around, so the practice would simply end if that were a concern.

I don't think many people with a once in a lifetime chance to play in a real NHL game are going to take a dive just so the home team wins.

The opportunity to show off your skills, even if sub-par by NHL standards, likely would outweigh the pride from helping your team get a questionable win in an 82 game season.

I think there’s a few reasons they don’t worry about it:

1. This very rarely comes up at all.

2. These guys aren’t usually that good (by NHL standards) and you’ve probably lost the game anyway. You’re relying on your defense to keep the puck away from them more than you’re relying on them to excel.

3. (Probably most important to your point). This is one of the best days in this guy’s life. He’s In an NHL game and will be in the highlight reels. Playing well and stopping his team’s power forward from scoring is a massive high that does way more than his preferred team winning or losing.

I am in the UK so have as little right to talk about it really, though I did play in university. Basically this is so rare, it's in the name 'emergency backup', teams take a backup (sometimes third even) to away games; they have to both be injured probably in the same game (because if beforehand they'd roster someone else, call them up from an associated junior team say) for this to happen. And the fan/local has never trained with the team. They're nowhere near NHL level. They're basically 'traffic in front of the net' to whichever team, so it really doesn't make a difference, I don't expect.

(And psychologically for the fan/local, they probably want to give it their all in their moment in the limelight? Why throw your one night in the NHL just because the wrong team got so unlikely injured?)

That's not really a choice for the visiting team to make. A team can only have two goalies dressed for a game. The emergency backup goalie rule (which is unique to the NHL, AFAIK) is that the home team has to have an emergency goalie booked who's available as a stand-in for either team should both of the team's dressed goalies get injured during the game. Either team would only realistically take that option if they have no other choice.

It's a relatively rare occurrence, and I imagine that anybody who ends up playing as an emergency backup would make an honest effort out of sportsmanship, and also because it's an unique opportunity and experience, even if it's for the visiting team.

The emergency backup goalie is essentially the ultimate underdog and ends up being the fan favourite for the game. Sometimes the home crowd has started to cheer for him even though he was playing for the visiting team.

I don't know what would be going through the emergency goalie's head if they had to step in for a really high-stakes game, though. I don't think that has happened so far.

It's probably not a formal on call where people are required to be available, just a list of people that are willing to jump in if they can.

You are right, and I should have worded that way. I can see how what I said makes it seem like no one is there, and they just burn through the list until they find someone.

Yes, the "on call" person is actually there, and if for some reason the team knows in advance that the EBUG cannot attend for whatever reason, THEN they go down the list for the next available "on call" EBUG. All of which happens before the game starts.

My team has had the same main EBUG for years, and he even runs his own Youtube channel if it piques your interest.

https://www.youtube.com/c/BonesyTV/videos

I'd be careful with that link. I clicked a link to a similar video where Dave Grohl invited a kid from the audience to play guitar at a Foo Fighters concert. I watched it, and a couple other videos YouTube suggested involving audience members invited to play during pop or rock concerts.

I had never heard of Dave Grohl before watching that video, and had never knowingly listened to Foo Fighters music. I had heard of them, and probably heard some of their songs in passing without knowing it, and that's all.

Nevertheless Google apparently decided I was obsessed with Dave Grohl and for the next couple of months my Google News feed has several Dave Grohl stories per day. Very few of them had anything to do with music. They were almost always trashy celebrity gossip such as who Grohl was seen with or when he was drunk and that kind of thing.

(And no, I don't normally follow any celebrity gossip--I only see celebrity gossip when a celebrity does something outrageous enough to make the national news, so this wasn't simply Google seeing that I liked gossip and adding Grohl to the mix).

I wasn't clicking those stores, and after a couple weeks I started clicking the "fewer stories like this" option, but they still kept almost completely filling up the "For You" part of my Google News feed.

I've never had that happen before or since with any other random link I've followed to a video. Just with Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters.

Pitching in baseball follows a similar rule: the pitcher that gives up the winning run is awarded the loss, the last pitcher to pitch for the winning team is awarded the win.

Yep. Ayres, amusingly, got the win because he allowed two goals after coming in with a 3-1 scoreline. (It was 4-1 by the time he allowed a goal.) Foster, holding a lead, never allowed a goal, and thus didn't become the goalie of record.

Not so much can’t as may not, to be clear. Presumably they’re fine skaters.

Hey, even Patrick Roy had a bad night and only stopped 10 out of 16 before.

Similarly, Brodus was napping at the frat house when he got the call during pre-game warmups to come suit up.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/derrick-brodus-tennessee-foot...