Fans in Carolina cheer for David Ayres during the game between the Dallas Stars and Carolina Hurricanes at at PNC Arena on February 25, 2020 in Raleigh several days after his miraculous win north of the border. Ayres has been on a wild Hollywood journey since he became a hockey hero. Grant Halverson/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment David Ayres was hitting the lowest point of his life - the lowest point, really, of any life. Having endured a kidney transplant and all the medical issues that come with it at 27, he was, several years later, feeling he had no reason to live, nothing motivating him to even get out of bed in the morning. Ayres had once been a promising hockey goalie. But the medical issues ended all that without even a whiff of the minors, and now the Ontario native, living on added but borrowed time, wondered why he should even go on. He met with a friend and explained his situation; she encouraged him to get help and maybe even a job in a rink? He had long been versed in matters of ice maintenance. This way, he could be around the game he loved and perhaps even get in a little scrimmaging on the side. He took a job as an equipment and operations person, ending up at a rink in Calgary. Related Stories Movies Snoop Dogg Criticizes LGBTQ Representation in Disney's 'Lightyear': "It Threw Me for a Loop" Movies Tony Hale Worried He'd Be Replaced in 'Toy Story 4' by a "Huge Star" So began a journey that would bring the workaday maintenance man from a modest Toronto suburb back from the brink - and, eventually, to a place where he became the oldest goalie to win an NHL regular-season game, the only goalie to come out of the stands to win an NHL game, and to one of the most unusual folk heroes modern sports has ever known. Along the way Ayres has also become both a Hollywood cautionary tale and an inspirational example, a man once broought aboard by Disney and CAA who nonetheless demonstrates (he hopes) the power of going your own indie way. And has done so with the kind of diffidence that can only come from a lifetime in the sports backwaters. "I have to admit I didn't imagine a lot of it playing out this way," Ayres says with an everyman shrug, "I just wanted to be on the ice." He didn't realize how slippery that would make things. ** The night of February 22, 2020 was not, as sports dates go, one that anyone might've expected historians to pen chapters about. The NFL season was three weeks finished; MLB's opening day was four weeks away (and eventually thwarted by COVID); the lineup of NBA and NHL games was unremarkable. Eleven hockey games were played that night, two of them going to shootouts. The contest between the Carolina Hurricanes and Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotia Bank Arena in downtown Toronto was not one of them. The box-score shows the Canes winning 6-3, a routine victory in a humdrum part of the calendar. But peer a little deeper and you'll see the winning goalie was one David Ayres, a 42-year-old ice-maintenance man for the Maple Leafs' minor-league affiliate Marlies three kilometers west on Lakeshore Boulevard, a 42-year-old who had never been in an NHL game before that night - a 42-year-old who had bought some snacks and was hanging out in the stands when the game began. Thanks to the Emergency Backup Goalie rule that has both teams retaining the same neutral player in case of multiple injuries - think the "official quarterback" from childhood touch-football games - Ayres was technically capable of playing that night. (Early in the morning, before his official operations job began with the Marlies, he would often practice with the team as a scrimmage goalie.) More than that - thanks to the so-called "EBUG" rule, Ayres was technically capable that night of playing for the visiting team. So when both Canes goalies went down to injury in the game's first 30 minutes with the club up 3-1, Ayres got a text that he might want to hurry down to the locker room. And that's how the 42-year-old sometime-Zamboni driver ended up in front of 18,000 of his hometown fans, as a member of the hometown organization - playing against his hometown team. He had been wearing a Leafs T-shirt to show that hometown support. He didn't even take it off - he just pulled over it the Hurricanes jersey he was hastily handed. After rushing onto the ice, Ayres gave up goals on each of the first two shots - who wouldn't? But then he made one save, then another, and another. Somehow, in the period-plus of hockey that followed, Ayres stopped all eight of the next shots, against All-Stars like Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. "I don't think they took it easy on me," Ayres recalls of those players. "Maybe they could've taken a step or two in but only a few times." The Hurricanes, meanwhile, scored three goals. And when the final horn