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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / The Miracle On Ice Part II: Emergency Backup Goalie and Zamboni Driver Dave Ayres For the Win!

The Miracle On Ice Part II: Emergency Backup Goalie and Zamboni Driver Dave Ayres For the Win!

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On 22 February 1980, the US Olympic hockey team beat the Soviet Olympic hockey team in what has been called the miracle on ice. Tonight in Toronto a second miracle on ice occurred. The Carolina Hurricanes starting goalie left the game with an injury. During the second period, the Hurricanes back up goalie also left the game with an injury. The NHL has a system in place for this called the emergency backup goalie (EBUG) – it is not played by Robert Picardo. At every arena, during every NHL game, a local goalie is kept in the arena in case one team’s starting and backup goalies are both forced to leave the game. Usually the emergency backup goalie is a local recreational league player or coach who has played the position for a while and they are prepared to suit up for either team. They usually spend the night in one of the luxury boxes, get to watch the game for free, get free food and drink, and then go home at the end of the night. Every so often one of them has to actually dress and go on the ice. Tonight that emergency backup goalie in Toronto was Dave Ayres who is 42 years old and is the Zamboni driver for the Toronto Maple Leafs. And he had to dress and go on the ice.

This is his story!

Also, a kidney donor!

Other teams in the league tweeted out their support!

And the Canes, with a playoff run on the line, were ecstatic about Dave’s performance!

 

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper weighed in.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    On 22 February 1980, the US Olympic hockey team beat the Soviet Olympic hockey team in what has been called the miracle on ice.

    Hansen Brothers!

  3. 3.

    Gravenstone

    Will always remember hearing about the “Miracle on Ice” during halftime of our HS men’s BB game against our hated rivals. Unfortunately, we were not as fortunate as the US Men’s teams that evening…

  12. 12.

    CaseyL

    Wonderful story.  My heart could use some warming right now :)

    One thing, though: EBUG Ayres is the Zamboni driver for the Maple Leafs?  So he had to play goalie against his own team… well, sorta his own team?

    Gonna be a little interesting the next time he grooms the ice…

  13. 13.

    FelonyGovt

    What a great story. And my Kings are winning… at least so far (going to see them Wednesday night!)

  15. 15.

    guachi

    The only way this could have been better is if the game was in North Carolina as the crowd would have been going nuts.

  16. 16.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    From 2017 – CBC article “Have Pads-Will Play: The dream is never dead for NHL emergency goalies”

    As for the original Miracle on Ice, watch for the tangerine twittler to mess up the 40th anniversary (wouldn’t want to make Vova upset about the loss). An attempt below at what he could say.

    “Lucky goal by Mike Eurozoney – USSR would have won it big but BAD COACHING pulled Tretchyak. Lake Placid-where the hell is that? Not even big enough for one of my hotels.”

  17. 17.

    JWR

    OT…

    Daredevil ‘Mad Mike’ Hughes killed in rocket crash outside Barstow

    Mike Hughes, the self-made engineer who billed himself as the “world’s greatest daredevil,” was killed Saturday outside Barstow during a launch of a homemade rocket gone wrong, his publicist confirmed. […]

    About him being a Flat Earther:

    “I don’t think he believed it,” Shuster said. “He did have some governmental conspiracy theories. But don’t confuse it with that flat Earth thing. That was a PR stunt we dreamed up.”

  18. 18.

    smintheus

    It helped that the Leafs could barely get a shot on goal – even with a power play – because…well, either the Canes’ defense manned up and shut them down, or because the Leafs just s*ck. Probably a bit of both. The Leafs’ coach was so fed up with their ineptitude that he stapled 4 of the Leafs’ leading players to the bench in the final minutes of the game. It was one of the most humiliating failures for Leafs’ Nation in the last several decades – a period of many humiliating failures for Toronto.

  19. 19.

    trollhattan

    He’s the George Blanda of David Ayres (Ayreses?). Has he ever palled around with Obama?

    That’s simply the best, and for no extra charge I learn the term EBUG. And holy shit, four goalies on one game? So glad they got him back on the ice for a curtain call. Then back on the zamboni, I guess.

  23. 23.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @Gravenstone: I’ll always remember hearing the outcome of the Miracle on Ice game while watching it as NBC broadcast it tape-delayed – and with several minutes left the game (as broadcast), the local channel did a station break and their anchor Renee Poussaint came on and announced “USA wins!!! News at 11.”

    Yeah, that was great.

  24. 24.

    The Dangerman

    @JWR:

    …killed in rocket crash outside Barstow.

    Killed in a HOMEMADE rocket crash.

    Darwin Awards can shut down for the rest of the year.

  32. 32.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    .@POTUS recognizing and invited on stage at his Las Vegas rally the 1980 “miracle on ice” hockey team, who are in Vegas this weekend celebrating 40th anniversary.

    Late coach Herb Brooks daughter on stage saying, “he would of been a Trump fan.” pic.twitter.com/iFZmFDrm6c

    — Steven Marsh (@smarsh91) February 21, 2020

    They wore MAGA hats.

    Sickening.

  36. 36.

    Just One More Canuck

    The Leafs are getting roasted over this by the media and their fans over this (I live in the Toronto area but am most definitely not a leafs fan)  – this should have been an easy win for them but as much skill as they have, the team just just quits sometimes. The rest of the league is laughing at them

  37. 37.

    Uncle Cosmo

    I’m shocked! shocked! that none of yinz has seen fit to recall Game 2 of the 1928 Stanley Cup Finals, in which New York Rangers goalie Lorne Chabot was knocked out of the game with an injury & (there being no backup goalie on the squad, & the opponent** refusing to allow goalies who were in the crowd to take his place in the nets, the Rangers coach – 44-year-old Lester Patrick – suited up & played the last half of the game in the NY nets, allowing 1 goal & saving 18 of 19 shots in an overtime victory.  (The Rangers won the Cup that year – their last for the next 50.)

    (FTR I only know about this because it was one of the stories in a book on sports legends Dad got me as a kid. He & I both learned to appreciate the sport much later in life.)

    ** The Montreal Maroons. There is probably no truth to the rumour :^D that this game inspired that immortal line of Culture Icon & Hero Of The Zeitgeist Bugs Bunny, “Whadda maroon!”

  38. 38.

    Another Scott

    Charlie Pierce makes some good points this morning.:

    (One solid indication of the depth of [St. Bernard’s] appeal is that, almost immediately after the New Hampshire primary, the culinary workers union in Nevada slammed him over Medicare For All—but, on Saturday, the actual membership of that powerful union turned out for him in droves.)

    Of course, none of that prevented a general freakout on television and online. Chris Matthews compared the most successful Jewish presidential candidate in American history to the triumphant Wehrmacht. James Carville looked very much like he might stroke out right there on live TV. Here’s what these two galoots, as well as the Sanders partisans who see Bill ’n Hill behind every tree, don’t seem to understand: the Clintonized Democratic party is dead. It died in November of 2016 and it has been replaced even in warm, pointless nostalgia by the Obama years. It’s time to move on. It’s time for the 2016 Democratic primaries to end. Come down out of your cave in the hills and turn in your weapons and greet the 21st century.

    Ignore the pundits, but recognize the lay of the land. There’s still lots of time and delegates to pick, but it is going to take work for someone to defeat him.

    The next debate is Tuesday at 8 PM ET in South Carolina (CBS). Early voting started 29 days before the primary (Saturday 2/29). It should be a lively one…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  41. 41.

    Edmund Dantes

    Was it last year or the year before where Chicago had to use the emergency backup goalie.

    That was another pretty sweet moment.

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