Opinion | The Leafs playing an amateur goalie in an ‘emergency’ isn’t charming. It threatens the integrity of the NHL

What seemed adorable and harmless fun in the Maple Leafs crease on Saturday night seemed patently absurd two nights later. And it might happen again this week.

Welcome to the NHL’s late season salary cap carousel of fun.

Integrity of the sport? Value for the fans? None of these things are as important to Gary Bettman and his bean counters than making sure the letter of the law is observed when it comes to salary cap rules and regulations.

Mind you, these are the same folks that essentially allowed the Tampa Bay Lightning to use Nikita Kucherov and his $9.5-million salary completely outside the constraints of the salary cap two years ago en route to winning the Stanley Cup. This is hockey as if it were designed to entertain the world’s nerdiest accountant.

Now, a little history probably helps a bit here.

Despite being the most important position in the sport, and it’s not close, the position of goaltender has often been given a strange status in the NHL. Back in 1964, at a time when NHL teams only dressed one goalie and the home team supplied a “house” goalie if either team required a replacement, Detroit’s Terry Sawchuk was injured in a playoff game. His replacement was Bob Champoux, a minor leaguer who had never played an NHL game and wouldn’t play another for nine years.

Pretty much everyone understood this was a ridiculous way to run a serious pro league. So halfway through the next season, the rule was abruptly changed. From that point on, NHL clubs had to dress two goalies, at home and on the road.

Still, goofy stuff continued to happen with goalies.

On New Year’s Eve, 1969, for example, the Leafs found themselves with one healthy NHL goalie, Bruce Gamble. Both Johnny Bower and Marv Edwards were hurt. So they used Gerry McNamara as Gamble’s backup. McNamara, who would one day become the team’s general manager, had at that point been retired for five years from senior hockey.

The idea of NHL teams sticking just about anybody in there to play goal has been going on for a while. David Ayres, of course, is the patron saint for those who find this utterly charming.

One can never imagine an NFL team deciding to bring in a local high school star to play backup quarterback in a pinch. Or the Blue Jays bringing in a local fastball ace to buttress the bullpen for a regular season game.

But this is Bettman’s NHL, and the commissioner now mostly dedicated to being the longest serving in history doesn’t mind a little bit of a bush-league look when it fits his style of thinking. So on Saturday night against the hapless Habs, the league didn’t mind at all that the Leafs seemingly had no choice but to dress the University of Toronto goalie Jett Alexander as backup to Ilya Samsonov.

To say this was a one-time thing, or an isolated situation late in a season, would be wrong. In October 2021, with the season barely underway, the Leafs had to bring in U of T netminder Alex Bishop to back up Jack Campbell when Brandon Pridham’s counting was off.

That happened again on Saturday, and it was giggles all around when the Leafs shellacked the Canadiens and brought Alexander in for the final 70 seconds. Montreal defenceman Chris Wideman quite rightly suggested this lacked class and amounted to the Leafs showing up he and his teammates.

“They’ll get what they deserve in a few weeks,” Wideman said after the game.

But a lot of Leaf fans backed the idea of giving the double major in English and earth and environmental sciences his chance of a lifetime and shouted that anyone who didn’t agree was a killjoy. Just like those mean old folks who took Vladdy’s home run jacket away.

Then the entire episode happened to the Leafs again Monday night against Florida. Toronto’s abacus was malfunctioning again, and shuffling Wayne Simmonds off the roster while dealing with other injuries didn’t create enough salary room for the team to dress an actual NHL goalie as a backup.

This time, it was Nick Chenard of the Owen Sound Attack who got the “chance of a lifetime” to dress as No. 2 behind Samsonov, although the 21-year-old Chenard didn’t get to play. Is this Toronto’s fault? Of course it is. They’ve been flying very close to the cap all season, and it was bound to trip them up at some point.

But while it’s the fault of the Leafs for letting it happen, it’s the responsibility of the league to make sure at all times that competitive integrity is priority No. 1. You might even suggest that with betting a major component of the NHL game now, competitive integrity is more important than ever and might be undercut by using university students as substitute NHLers.

The buck stops at Bettman’s desk. When you’ve got one of the league’s marquee teams unable to dress a 100 per cent professional lineup for a game with playoff implications, you step in and make sure that doesn’t happen. Why? Because it embarrasses everyone when it happens, and it’s completely unnecessary. So maybe, like they did in ’64-65, you adjust the rules partway through the season to make sure your teams have qualified NHL goalies for regular season and playoff game.

Not just some of them or most of them. All of them. Nickels and dimes shouldn’t ever stop a $6 billion hockey business from having credible NHL players in the lineup.

Perhaps teams should have to carry an extra bit of cap space in reserve at all times to make sure this doesn’t happen. Or perhaps the cap charge should transfer to next year if an emergency goaltending situation creates a temporary problem. There’s a smart new NHL Players’ Association boss who might even have an idea or two.

But NHL teams should always be staffed by qualified NHL players if only because 32 teams are charging NHL prices for tickets. It’s really not that hard a concept.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin

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