Stop Taking The Fun Out Of The Game

I've been saying on this blog for some time that the NHL is business. It's a very lucrative business where millionaires are made by showcasing talent that billionaires employ. There aren't a lot of professions on the planet where a guy can go from a $20-per-day per diem to signing a million-dollar contract, but such is life as a professional athlete. Kris Versteeg, pictured to the left, is one of those athletes who showcased his talent in junior hokey to become a millionaire, and he knows what it takes to carve out a niche in the business of hockey as a player. What Kris Versteeg and other players should remember is that there's an element of fun that has to remain in these games or people will stop watching. Knowing who will win before even playing the game takes all the fun out of sports, and it's why his idea of changing the emergency back-up goaltender needs to squashed here and now with extreme prejudice.

If you missed the clip on Rogers Sportsnet on Monday, here is the panel, led by David Amber, talking about the effect that David Ayres' amazing night will have on the game.

“If the Dallas Cowboys had three quarterbacks get hurt, they don't go downtown Dallas and see if any accountants can throw the pigskin around.”

While the David Ayres storyline was fun to watch, Kris Versteeg shares his thoughts on why it shouldn't happen again. #SNTrade pic.twitter.com/OXmu89YbHK

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) February 24, 2020

Both Versteeg and Kevin Bieksa - two men who made millions of dollars playing the game - are against this idea of having an emergency replacement goalie available in case both healthy netminders carried by a team get hurt in the same game. While I can see their points about football teams going out to "downtown Dallas" to find an accountant to play quarterback, Versteeg's old team, the Chicago Blackhawks, did indeed have an accountant play net for them in Scott Foster, and he helped the Blackhawks win their game against the Winnipeg Jets last season. Maybe show a little more respect for the accountants of the world and their athletic abilities, Kris?

All kidding aside, I find it hard that Kris Versteeg and Kevin Bieksa want to remove or significantly change an element of the game that got them front-page headlines in every newspaper and lead story spots on every sports highlight show on the planet. There's a reason why emergency back-up goaltender (EBUG) feats like Ayres' night are made into big deals - they happen so rarely that when they do happen, everyone watches! Like goalie fights which happen so rarely, the EBUGs get talked about for a few days before everything goes back to normal and life moves on. It's not wrecking the game's integrity or anything along those lines because it's such a rare feat that "once in a blue moon" shouldn't derail any team's season.

This game is supposed to be fun. It's getting harder and harder to access the game at a personal level with rising ticket and merchandise prices, rising costs to play the game, and the oft-seen racial-, sexual-, and gender-based barriers that the NHL seemingly says it's removing, but has made very little progressing on actually removing. Having a 42 year-old goaltender come in and play should be low on the list of things that the NHL needs to fix when talking about a multi-billion dollar industry, but let's make sure we focus on the best thing to happen to hockey in February and try to snuff it out because the integrity of the game is threatened. Which it's not.

While I understand the angle that the Florida Panthers were probably worried that Toronto had an easy path to a win with Ayres in the Carolina net, the fact that the Panthers are hitching their wagons to the successes and fallbacks of another team suggests that a team with 20 games remaining on their schedule are looking for excuses if they do happen to miss the playoffs. That attitude is entirely the wrong way for Florida to be viewing the standings when they still can determine their own fate. If I was Dale Tallon and I heard anyone on the Panthers even whisper words like Anthony Stewart had suggested about the success of the Panthers this season being dependent on this one game between Toronto and Carolina, I'd have buried that player in the minor leagues. If the Panthers want to use this game as a crutch for an overly-underwhelming season, they should fold that franchise because they don't deserve membership in a league where the best of the best play the game.

Hockey cannot live in its own secluded, protected world. It needs great stories like David Ayres' netminding performance to break the monotony of meaningless games in a regular season that often feels much too long. It requires David Ayres' story to break us from the NHL's constant and consistent refusal to recognize CTE cases being caused by head trauma suffered in hockey. It must have tales told about David Ayres to counteract the heinous acts alleged to have been committed by some people involved in the game. Most of all, David Ayres' success is living embodiment that dreams can still come true - even if just for slightly more than one period of hockey - despite all the course changes and different paths he's walked thus far in life.

Look, there are stories of the little guy breaking through in sports all over the place, and we celebrate these stories through movies and folklore. From Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger's time at Notre Dame University as a football player to Vince Papale going from an unemployed substitute teacher to playing three seasons with the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles, from every kid who dreams of winning the Stanley Cup while shooting tennis balls into a net on his or her front street to the career minor-leaguer getting his one shot with the pro team, David Ayres is all those people and we, the fans, can relate to those stories because we all have that "just gimme a shot" fantasy as sports fans. We love underdog stories because most of us can relate to those tales of overcoming insurmountable odds in one way or another.

When Scott Foster helped Chicago beat the Jets, he lived a dream and never demanded anything else from his moment of fame. David Ayres is doing the exact same thing that Foster did - enjoying his unexpected fifteen minutes of fame after finding himself in the spot. Removing that chance for me, you, or someone we know to seize the opportunity is yet another way of which game is getting harder to justify being a fan, so the NHL should legitimate leave the EBUG rules alone. It's like winning the lottery - many will play, but only a select few every truly win the grand prize. Think of the EBUG like a lottery for some amateur player and fan of the game to experience what it's like to have that opportunity that may have escaped his or her grasp at some point.

It's good for the game because the fans love it. And isn't the point of professional sports, specifically NHL hockey, keeping fans of all ages interested and engaged in the game so that the bottom line stays healthy? You have no league without the fans, so stop trying to take away something the fans love. The integrity of the game isn't at stake when an emergency back-up goalie makes an appearance. Instead, it's the realization of a dream - even just for a few seconds in The Show - of every beer-league goalie on the planet and every kid who has been told "you're not good enough". It's the belief that, given that one moment, we'd all shine brightly and be good enough.

David Ayres was clearly good enough for one night. And that's why everyone is still talking about it.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!