- Eric Francis reports the Flames will name 35-year-old Dusty Nickel their EBUG for 2026-27
- The new CBA turns emergency backups into full-time employees who travel to all 84 games
- Read below for Nickel’s playing resume and the rules that end the David Ayres era
The Flames found their emergency backup goalie without leaving Calgary.
Eric Francis reported Friday that Calgary will name 35-year-old Dusty Nickel its EBUG for the 2026-27 season. Nickel owns a construction company in the city and has been the Saddledome emergency goalie for years, taking shots at practice and helping the team out wherever the day called for it.
The gig is a real job now. Under the new collective bargaining agreement, every club has to employ a full-time emergency backup who travels with the team. Nickel will be at all 84 regular season games, ready to go if Calgary cannot put two healthy goalies on the bench.
He has already been that close once. Jacob Markstrom came down with an illness before a November 2023 game against Vegas, neither Wranglers goalie could get to the rink in time, and Nickel signed a tryout contract roughly an hour before puck drop. He sat behind Dan Vladar in full gear and never touched the ice.
His playing career is exactly the kind the rules are written for. Nickel went 17-15-2 with an .883 save percentage across 41 games for the AJHL’s Calgary Canucks in 2009-10, appeared in 19 more the next season, added five with the SJHL’s Kindersley Klippers, and played one game at Mount Royal. That is the whole file.
The CBA is picky about who qualifies. An emergency goalie cannot have played an NHL game on a standard contract, cannot have more than 80 professional games on his record, and cannot have played pro hockey in the previous three seasons. Marc-Andre Fleury floated doing it for Minnesota after he retired, and the rules would not let him.
What the change really does is retire the version fans fell in love with. Scott Foster, an accountant playing beer league at night, came out of the stands and closed out a win for Chicago in 2018. David Ayres, a 42-year-old arena employee, beat the Maple Leafs for Carolina two years later. Watch how that one went:
An emergency goalie has actually entered an NHL game six times in the past decade. Dusty Nickel now gets paid to sit and wait for the seventh.
