The most unusual job in sports
NHL’s emergency goalies live out storybook dreams when they get the call to suit up
Tom Fenton was in a barber’s chair when he got the call. Nathan Schoenfeld was giving his five-weekold 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 unusual position in 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 incredibly rare in U.S. professional sports. But it has happened a handful of times in hockey already this season, including New Year’s Eve 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.
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 after 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 warm-ups “the best 15 minutes of hockey ever.”
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. Just Friday night, Luongo was injured during warm-ups and Panthers ticket sales account executive Bobby Segin dressed as the emergency backup against the Nashville Predators.
After hearing rumours 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 serve as the backup for the Vancouver Canucks on Oct. 18. His coach told him, “You’re going up to play in the big leagues.”
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 in December 2010.
Preparing to fly home to see his parents in Ontario, Fenton was getting a trim at a Supercuts in White Plains, N.Y., 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.”
The Coyotes this past February turned to Schoenfeld, a financial adviser and son of former coach and player Jim Schoenfeld. An injury to Anders Lindback took Schoenfeld from a day off with family to the rink, where he got to back up Louis Domingue and enjoy the camaraderie of a winning locker-room.
“I was sitting there and I stayed fully dressed because my (two-yearold) son was coming down to get some photos and I’m just listening to the guys talk and Shane Doan gives me the (team’s) MVP belt,” Schoenfeld said. “When that happened, that was kind of the icing on the cake of the whole thing.”