It was a typical winter Friday for 45-year-old Dave Nozzolillo. His coworkers at Wintrust Bank in Orland Park, Illinois, all wanted to get out early. And on a cold and blistery day, nobody wanted to veer far for lunch. So they ate at the Hooters in the adjacent parking lot.
“I don’t really like the food there, but begrudgingly did,” Nozzolillo. “I tried to eat as clean as possible; I got the naked wings without any sauce or breading. Did get some fries. Turned out to be the pregame meal of champions.”
Nozzolillo finished working from home. He was on the phone with a client until 5 p.m. and missed a call from Danny Tranchida, his hockey operations contact at the Chicago Blackhawks. Tranchida called again.
“Hey, Spencer Knight has the flu too,” Tranchida reported. “So Knight and [Arvid] Soderblom will not be in the building tonight. We need you to get there early. You’re going to dress.”
Nozzolillo’s nights are often spent in the Chicago-area beer leagues. A former D-III goalie at Lake Forest College — who, by his own admission, “rode the pine there” and quit junior year after the team brought in two 21-year-old freshmen from Alberta — Nozzolillo now plays in men’s leagues, including the over-40 elites. “Everyone needs goalies,” he said. “So I fill in when I can.”
Dave Nozzolillo with one of the beer league teams he plays for. Dave Nozzolillo
For the past four years, Nozzolillo has also been one of the Blackhawks’ four designated emergency backup goalies. He’s an independent contractor on a 1099; when he’s on call, he gets paid $100 to show up at the United Center and watch hockey. That’s usually the extent of it. Last Friday was the once-in-a-lifetime exception.
Nozzolillo scrambled. He had thrown his hockey gear in the washing machine earlier in the day, but forgot to flip. It was soaking wet. He gave his clothes a quick tumble in the dryer then drove 30 minutes to the United Center. Halfway there, Nozzolillo received another text confirming his last name spelling for a jersey. “As soon as I got that I was like ‘Oh s—,'” Nozzolillo recalled. “It’s happening.”
From the moment he walked into the locker room it was a whirlwind.
“I’ve got people swarming me. The equipment manager saying, ‘Hey, do you need socks? Do you need this? Can I sharpen your skates? Do you need some water?'” Nozzolillo said. “Then there’s camera guys going around filming and stuff. Some of the guys are coming up and introducing themselves to me. I’m like, ‘What is going on in here?'”
Nozzolillo was given a one-day amateur tryout contract to sign (grand total: $0). He quickly glanced over it and saw a few errors. He filled in his correct birthdate. He scratched off where it said he caught left and wrote in right.
“It said my name was Dave, not David,” Nozzolillo said. “Anybody that knows me knows that I hate Dave. I’m David. But I didn’t want to be too anal, so I left it. I wish I had changed it. I didn’t even consider the possibility that it was going to be registered with the NHL and I would be referred to on TV and it would all blow up like this. I was just trying to stay in the moment.”
WITH THE NHL preparing for a three-week Olympic break for the first time in more than a decade, the league’s schedule is more compressed than ever. That’s especially an issue during flu and virus season. A stomach bug is the one lower- or upper-body injury that team doctors say even the toughest hockey players can’t gut through — as the Blackhawks experienced last week.
“My understanding was, if you weren’t puking, you were playing,” Nozzolillo said.
“It definitely is as bad as I’ve seen it kind of rip through a locker room,” Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill said. “It was just taking down guy by guy.”
The Blackhawks were already down four players on Friday, including Soderblom, so they called up AHL goaltender Drew Commesso who played for Chicago’s affiliate Rockford IceHogs. “I thought I was playing,” said Knight, the usual starter. “I showed up at the rink but I still got sick there. The flu is tough. I was surprised by how quickly it came about.”
When Knight was sent home, it was determined Commesso would start and Nozzolillo would back up. Now under contract, the 45-year-old could take warmups and sit on the bench.
Emergency backup goalies (EBUGs) are one of the NHL’s most unusual quirks. They allow for a made-for-Disney moment as Regular Joes suit up for the best professional hockey league in the world. It all began in 2015 when the Florida Panthers lost both goaltenders in one game and flirted with disaster. The NHL instituted a rule in 2016 that an EBUG needed to be on standby, ready for either team. The league reasoned it was better to have someone with goaltending experience, however limited, rather than force a position player to risk injury by getting in net.
The EBUG rule has led to 15 minutes of fame for Zamboni driver David Ayers, who got into a Hurricanes vs. Maple Leafs game in 2020, and Chicago-area accountant Scott Foster, who played for 14 minutes and stopped all seven shots he faced against the Winnipeg Jets in 2019 — in the middle of tax season.
Foster is still one of Chicago’s designated EBUGs, and ironically was asked by the Blackhawks to attend morning skate on Friday to stand in for some drills (a less publicized but also common role around the league).
“When I saw Scott Foster on the ice, it was like I saw a celebrity,” said Blackhawks defenseman Alex Vlasic, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs. “I remember when he came in and was a legend. The guy who came in and stopped a one-timer from Patrik Laine.”
Friday night was Nozzollilo’s turn on the schedule. And even more pressing for the Blackhawks: against the Alex Ovechkin-led Capitals, they were featuring a 23-year-old goalie whose résumé included just one NHL start. And no room for error.
“It was a very, very tough spot for Drew,” Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson said. “From doing morning skate in Rockford and then coming to this game thinking you’re going to back up and then all of a sudden now you’re not backing up, you’re starting. And also with the EBUG, probably you’re getting left in for as many goals you let in. You’re not coming out unless you’re forced out.”
EVERY NHL WARMUP has a flow and routine with very specific timing. After one drill, the goalies typically step out and the players file in and all shoot on net.
Dave Nozzolillo warms up before a recent Blackhawks game. Dave Nozzolillo
“Well the EBUG stepped in there as all 20 guys are coming in,” Blackhawks defenseman Connor Murphy recalls laughing. “And he’s literally Goldberg [from Mighty Ducks] taking a million shots at once. He took it like a champ. He wanted to get the action. I totally respect that. If you’re going to get the chance to do that, you want some NHL shots.”
Nozzolillo, for the record, had no idea he shouldn’t have been in the net.
“I had a new tape job on my stick. I looked at it after warmups, and I didn’t have one puck mark on my stick,” Nozzolillo said. “Just to give you an idea of how many guys are trying to go top corner on me. I still made some good saves, I think. It was just nuts.”
Nozzolillo mostly observed the team as they gutted their way through Friday’s game, a tough 5-1 loss to Washington.
He said he found himself way more calm than he expected to be in the situation, though he experienced a moment of panic in the second intermission when he came back from the bathroom (where he saw yet another Blackhawks player keeled over the sink) and found all of Commesso’s gear — skates, pads, pants — sitting by his locker.
“And he’s missing. It’s nerve wracking. So I’m like, ‘Is he hurt? Is he sick? Am I playing?'” Nozzolillo said. “Nobody said anything to me. I’m wondering if I possibly have to go out there for the third. And then a couple minutes later…. he just appeared. You don’t really talk to goalies in the game, just let them stay in the zone. So I just said, ‘Nice period, keep it up.'”
Nozzolillo comes from a family of goalies. His two younger brothers play the position, and now so do his two nieces, Isabel and Adelyn. “Well I guess this finally puts to bed the debate of who the best goalie is,” Nozzolillo said.
NOZZOLILLO’S EXPERIENCE COULD be one of the last of its kind. The NHL and NHLPA will begin their new collective bargaining agreement next season, which brings an 84-game schedule and the end of EBUGs as we know it. Starting in 2026-27, teams are required to employ a full-time, traveling replacement goalie.
The new position will be a goalie who does not have NHL experience nor has played more than 80 professional games — or any professional games in the previous three years.
Inside front offices across the league, teams are bouncing ideas on how to fill the position. There are no salary parameters, and front offices are determining: how much is a position like this worth? The NHL believes the experience guidelines will eliminate any coveted targets for the position.
Many GMs told ESPN that they will likely pick a goalie with some experience playing junior or college hockey who could fill additional roles with the team — such as on the equipment staff or in communications.
“Those will be independent Club decisions and I would anticipate they will be far more related to what other things the EBUG candidates will be doing for their Clubs, as opposed to their emergency replacement duties (which generally never happen),” deputy commissioner Bill Daly wrote in an email.
NOZZOLILLO’S TIME AS part of the Blackhawks ended abruptly. Blashill came in and told the team, “We’ll talk about tonight tomorrow.” They had a flight to catch for Saturday’s game in Nashville.
Within 20 minutes, everyone was showered and on the bus. Nozzolillo had 300 unread text messages to attend to.
Rockford’s second goalie, Stanislav Berezhnoy, got driven to O’Hare after his game finished. By then it was determined, neither Knight nor Soderblom could travel.
Blashill turned to Commesso the next night. “I think there’s a lot of reasons goalies don’t play back-to-back in this league, because it’s a chance to get the other guy in,” said Blashill, a former goalie themselves. “But I believe goalies can. And we thought it was a good opportunity for Drew, to get back on the horse.”
The team committed better in front of Commesso, who made 37 saves to make his first NHL win a shutout. He was mobbed by the team in the locker room afterward.
“When he got a game last year, he got called up and played in New Jersey and we didn’t play well in front of him,” Vlasic said. “So I felt bad, then we left him out to dry Friday. So I just really wanted to see him win, he deserved it.”
Commesso and Berezhnoy returned to Rockford after the game. They both sat out the IceHogs’ next game, sidelined with sickness.
Nozzolillo has two more dates scheduled to be on call for the Blackhawks this season. He knows, most likely, nothing will happen. Before the team left, he told them if nothing else, it was an honor to wear the jersey.
“People would die to be in that role, I guess,” Nozzolillo said. “It’s not very glamorous, but it’s something.”