So on days like today, days that are preceded by holiday in which our staff gets a tiny

but so well deserved day off we are back tomorrow incidentally.

We like to reach into the archives and bring you an episode that we love.

And we're about to do that here, but we're doing it with a show that is I think the most

mathematically appropriate episode possible to give you. On a day in which, yeah, the people

who are supposed to be doing this job simply cannot. It is an episode about the greatest

and simply the strangest rule in all the sports and it almost never gets invoked.

But now you're about to meet the people who have made it happen. So enjoy and yes, I

am Pablo Torre. It is Tuesday, January 17th. And this is ESPN daily.

Jeremy Jeff, where are we starting this particular story?

Let's start the story on April 30, 2022, the last day of the NHL regular season, we're

in Dallas, the ducks are in town and the ducks starting goalie, John Gibson in the first

period he suffers with a call in hockey and only in hockey an upper body injury.

That of a curve ball coming out of the locker room and that for the ducks Anthony Stolars

takes over for John Gibson.

That's wrong. That means the backup goes into the game. They're back up goalie Anthony

Stolars. But in the second period, he suffers again, they only call it this in hockey,

a lower body injury. And that means there's no goalie on the roster left to play for the

Anaheim ducks. And this is where emergency backup goalies enter the picture.

In this case, a gentleman named Thomas Hodges at this point must come to the ice after

having been sitting in the stands. Totally, anonymously, you would have no idea if you were

sitting next to him having a beer eating a hot dog that you were sitting next to the guy

...