I think this is my favorite rule

If you can't live your dream, at least you can keep dreaming

This is a requirement in the National Hockey League that seems like it can’t possibly be real — and yet it has been for several years now.

It’s the rule that says that besides the two goalies who play for each professional team — a starter and a backup, usually — NHL teams also have to have an emergency backup goalie (known as an “EBUG”) at all of their home games.

This is a person sitting in the stadium, somewhere, who can quickly put on goalie equipment and fill in at as a third option for either team — home or visitors.

The best part is that EBUGs are not really professional athletes.

Occasionally a retired pro might get the position, but often they’re either team employees who might have played amateur or college-level hockey, or even “beer league” recreational players.

They sign up for the off chance that they’ll get to put on equipment and sit on the bench if a team’s starting goalie is injured, or even the rare opportunity to get a few minutes on the ice in an actual NHL game.

It’s actually happened a few times.

An accountant, a Zamboni driver …

In 2018, a 36-year-old accountant named Scott Foster got the call to come in as an EBUG for the Chicago Blackhawks in a game against the Winnipeg Jets.

Foster had played goalie in college — but that was a decade-plus earlier. Lo and behold, he stopped all seven shots that he faced.

“Who would’ve thought? You just keep grinding away in men’s league, and eventually, you’ll get your shot,” he quipped after the game.

It happened again in 2020, when David Ayres, the 42-year-old building operations manager for the farm team for the Toronto Maple Leafs, suited up in the middle of a game for the Carolina Hurricanes.

Ayers gave up two goals but made some other big saves, and got the win. Maple Leafs fans cheered him — but also tortured themselves with the idea that their home team was playing so badly that they lost to their own Zamboni driver.

Other EBUGs include a former college backup goalie, an NHL equipment manager, and a life insurance salesman, a Montreal police officer. A few of them got onto the ice for a few seconds.

But now, the NHL is apparently changing things up.

You get an EBUG! And you get an EBUG!

The NHL season ended last month when the Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup, and the league got right down to business — which included negotiations with the players association over the league’s collective bargaining agreement.

Among the changes: a revision to the EBUG rule.

Home teams would no longer keep an amateur goalie in the rink who could be called on to play for either team.

Instead, every NHL would sign their own EBUG, who would practice and travel with the team and be available for emergencies (but only for their own team).

The change makes practical sense. If you ran an NHL team, would you want to risk trusting your goal to an amateur?

I don’t think this has happened in an important game — say, a “must-win” to make the playoffs. But it could.

Also, there are only 64 pro goalie slots in the NHL (two per team).

So, adding a professional EBUG for each team creates 32 more potential professional jobs -- although as one knowlegeable fan blog put it, "the most likely scenario ... is that a member of the team's staff that already travels with the club, such as a goaltending coach, will end up being designated as their EBUG."

Still, let’s not forget what we’ll be losing.

An honorary citizen

While every smart, practical factor points to having professional emergency backups, fans seem to love it when an EBUG gets the call.

When Foster played, the Chicago Blackhawks sold replicas of his jersey online. After Ayres got the call, the team flew him to Raleigh for a celebration, and the governor named him an honorary citizen of North Carolina.

I think it’s the tiny bit of irrational assessment that fans make. Not to get all autobiographical, but it works like this:

Sure, at 50-plus years old, and not having worn skates more than a few times a year for a very long time, I’m probably not going to realize the dream I had as a 12-year-old of becoming a professional hockey player.

But am I really that far away from a 36-year-old accountant, or some of the other EBUGs?

Isn’t the EBUG a classic dilemma? Your head tells you one thing, but your heart says something else.

And then you get moments like this.

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7 other things worth mentioning

• A week after Grok, the AI engine on Elon Musk's X, praised Adolf Hitler, shared antisemitic tropes, and offered graphic suggestions on how to commit sexual assault, the Pentagon announced it has signed a $200 million contract to deploy "Grok for Government." Separately, Elmo from "Sesame Street" shocked social media users after the character’s X account was hacked. The Sesame Street character, whose account has over 640,000 followers, began posting several provocative and offensive posts. "Kill all Jews," one post read; another: "RELEASE THE FILES @realDonaldTrump CHILD F---ER," apparently referring to the Jeffrey Epstein documents. (Business Insider, Fox News)

• Attorney General Pam Bondi fired the top career official tasked with advising her and other senior Justice Department officials of their ethical obligations. Joseph Tirrell on Monday took to LinkedIn to post news of his termination, including a photo of his termination notice which provided no reasoning for his firing. (Yahoo News)

• A former Major League Baseball pitcher has been found guilty of murdering his father-in-law in what prosecutors called a financially motivated attack. Daniel Serafini, 51, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in the 2021 shooting death of Robert Gary Spohr, 70. Serafini's played for six different MLB teams after being drafted in the first round by the Minnesota Twins in 1992. His career ended in 2007, after he was suspended for 50 games for using performance-enhancing drugs. (ABC News)

• Real estate investors are snapping up a bigger share of U.S. homes on the market as rising prices and stubbornly high borrowing costs freeze out many other would-be homebuyers. Nearly 27% of all homes sold in the first three months of the year were bought by investors -- the highest share in at least five years, according to a report by real estate data provider BatchData. (ABC News)

• For the fifth year in a row, CNBC’s annual competitiveness study, America’s Top States for Business, rated Vermont the top state the country for quality of life: "The crime rate is among the lowest in the nation, the air is pristine, and Vermonters are healthy ..." Rounding out the top five: Maine is 2nd, New Jersey is 3rd, Minnesota comes in 4th, and Connecticut ranks 5th. (CNBC)

• A new study says kids are turning to AI chatbots for homework help, emotional advice — and sometimes, because they have no one else: 'I don't have anyone else to talk to.' (Quartz)

• Meet the 20-year-old choreographer who keeps making old songs go viral on TikTok and sparking millions of dollars in sales: "Every day I learn so much more about what it takes to make a viral dance, but if I'm being completely honest, every viral dance I've ever had has been on accident." (Pop Sugar)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Nick Morales on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.