A 31-Year-Old Bank Manager Dressed As Emergency Backup Goalie For The Arizona Coyotes Last Night

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It’s like a modern-day Rookie Of The Year, except instead of a kid with a rocket arm playing for the Cubbies, it was a middle-aged dude in Arizona who hadn’t played hockey since his club days at Arizona State in 2006.

In last night’s 6-2 win over Montreal, the Arizona Coyotes were forced to dress 31-year-old Nathan Schoenfeld, a bank manager after their other backup suffered an injury shortly before puck drop.

Per Deadspin:

The Coyotes’ Anders Lindback suffered an off-ice injury hours before Arizona hosted the Canadiens last night, so they went to the rolodex and found Nathan Schoenfeld, 31, whose most outstanding qualification might be that his father-in-law is the team’s equipment manager. Schoenfeld got the text message about an hour before puck drop, while he was in the middle of bathing his twin five-week-old boys.

I mean, just look at how happy this dude was just to be there.

He even got the ‘Yotes MVP Belt after the game.

I’m actually familiar with this, as I served as my high school soccer teams junior varsity goalkeeper in times of need. You know, when kids were gone because of band performances or faked sick so they didn’t have to be the fucking goalkeeper on the JV squad. But it’s fine — it’s not like I’m still haunted by the time I let one go through my legs and a bunch of 14-year-olds laughed and pointed at me. I don’t dream about it monthly and wake up in a cold sweat at all. But I digress.

It turns out that this all came about because of an NHL policy that I didn’t even know existed, but now need to know more about because I need to somehow get on this list.

If one of a team’s two goalies gets hurt or otherwise incapacitated before a game with not enough time to fly in a backup from the minors, the NHL maintains a list of potential goalies in each city—older guys with careers, probably played a little college hockey, have some connection to the team—who can report and sign at a moment’s notice, and, if things go well, get to sit on the bench and never ever get into a game.

I mean, I never played college hockey or anything, but I’m going to head to a Texas Stars minor league game soon and rub elbows with some of the big wigs in the front office in a desperate attempt to have my own success story like this one.

Oh, and his pay after this? Dude took down $500 and got to keep his game jersey. Not bad for getting a front row seat to a Monday night game of puck. .

[via Deadspin]

Image via Twitter

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Will

Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.

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