A most unique one-day job
Tom Fenton was in a barber’s chair when he got the call. Nathan Schoenfeld was giving his 5-week-old twin boys a bath. Eric Semborski was teaching kids to play hockey at a suburban rink.
Within hours, each was wearing a mask, pads and an NHL uniform as an emergency goaltender, perhaps the most unique position in all of sports.
Calling up someone with a bit of playing experience and saying, “Get your gear together, we need you,” is a storybook scenario for amateur athletes everywhere and it is incredibly rare in U.S. professional sports. But it has already happened a handful of times in hockey this season, most recently when longtime Carolina Hurricanes equipment manager Jorge Alves made history as the first emergency goalie to play in an NHL game in the modern era.
“To actually get out there, all of a sudden the lights seemed brighter,” said Alves, who played an unforgettable 7.6 seconds at the end of Carolina’s game at Tampa Bay on New Year’s Eve. “The lights were brighter out there and it was just like, `OK this is crazy.”’
Alves, a 37-year-old former minor league goalie and Marine, faced no shots and couldn’t care less as he happily joined an exclusive club of emergency goalies. He had watched weeks earlier as Semborski, a programs coordinator and youth hockey coach at the Philadelphia Flyers’ practice facility, dressed for the Blackhawks on Dec. 3 when Corey Crawford needed an emergency appendectomy.
He didn’t play against the Flyers, but the 23-year-old former Temple goalie was on the bench in a No. 50 jersey with his own name on it instead of Crawford’s and he called facing shots from Patrick Kane and Co. during warmups “the best 15 minutes of hockey ever.”
“It’s definitely a unique situation in sports that really only happens in hockey,” Semborski said.
While the emergency goalie situation might seem a bit chaotic, it used to be even more nebulous. Then came March 3, 2015, when the Florida Panthers were in a bind: Starter Roberto Luongo left a home game against Toronto with an unspecified upper-body injury, but then backup Al Montoya suffered a groin injury.
Play was stopped while goaltending coach Robb Tallas, a 41-year-old former NHL goalie, prepared to go in, as did forward Derek MacKenzie as a last resort. The NHL was asked if Tallas could take the ice, but the red tape was avoided when Luongo rushed back from a nearby hospital to return to the game.
The NHL instituted a rule beginning the following season requiring each team to have a list of local emergency goalie options for themselves and for visiting teams — and they’ve been needed.
After hearing rumors on a group chat with his teammates that Ryan Miller might not be able to dress, University of British Columbia goalie Matt Hewitt got the call to be the backup for the Vancouver Canucks on Oct. 18. His coach told him, “You’re going up to play in the big leagues.”
“I kind of just woke up not knowing anything and all of a sudden here I am, I’ve got to get ready to gear up for the Canucks,” Hewitt said.
While Hewitt was at least an active goalie at the time, Fenton’s pads were bone dry. He hadn’t played goal in months after his time at Division I American International College when the Coyotes called him to back up in December 2010.
Preparing to fly home to see his parents in Ontario, Fenton was getting a trim at a Supercuts in White Plains, New York, when his phone kept vibrating. He finally picked up the sixth call from a local president of youth hockey who told Fenton: “Pick up your phone, you dumb idiot. You’re going to play for the Phoenix Coyotes at Madison Square Garden.”
