What can I say? The Leafs pulled one major Zamboner February 22, 2020, and… What? I’m sorry… what exactly does it mean to “pull a Zamboner”, you ask? Well, let’s hope the Urban Dictionary people pick up on this induction and add it to their site because a Zamboner was pulled for the first and probably last time this past Saturday, and so it is time to make this a new English term because you never know when we’ll see another one.

Let me be clear when I say that there is a huge difference between a “Zamboner” and “pulling a Zamboner”. You see, a “Zamboner” is… how can I put this politely? It means… um… getting rather aroused by riding around on an ice-cleaning machine. When I found this out, I had to get a bit creative. So “pulling a Zamboner” (patent pending) is a verb meaning “to embarrassingly fail to defeat a forty-something Zamboni driver turned emergency goaltender despite possessing the league’s best offensive trio, trailing by three goals yet having nearly half the game left to play, and being in the middle of tight playoff race, which in itself should provide enough motivation to succeed.”

I can even use “pulling a Zamboner” in a sentence too. “The Zamboner the Leafs pulled back in February is going to be cited as the reason they crumbled late in the 2019-20 season and missed the playoffs.” It’s hard to believe that such a situation will ever happen again, but you never know, so just to make sure, we probably should hang on to the English language’s newest verb.

So, what exactly happened the night of February 22, 2020? Most of you reading this probably remember it well since it only happened a week ago, but for those of you reading this beyond 2020, let me recap. The Carolina Hurricanes are facing the Leafs in Toronto. Both teams are scrapping for their playoff lives, so neither team needed extra motivation. Nonetheless, the Hurricanes seemed to have a lot more of that than the listless Leafs.

The score was 3-1 Carolina when Petr Mrazek was knocked out of the game after having chased after a loose puck that was far out from his goal crease. Kyle Clifford of Toronto was also charging at the puck and unfortunately he was the only one who walked away unscathed. Normally, that would have meant James Reimer would skate his way out onto the ice to replace the Canes’ starter except in this case Mrasek wasn’t the starter, and Reimer had already been knocked out of commission earlier in the evening.

So in came Ayres, a Leafs practice goalie who also moonlights as a Zamboni driver, and even though the Leafs managed to score two quick ones on him to make the score 4-3, Ayres shut the door the rest of the way and earned the first star of the game. The Canes scored twice more in the third period and played out of their mind just hoping to keep the Leafs away from Ayres as much as possible. It really was an incredible night for the Canes’ newest goaltending sensation.

That being said, how could the Toronto Maple Leafs, they of the vaunted Auston Matthews-Mitch Marner-John Tavares line, they who were also fighting for their playoff lives only manage a measly 10 shots on a guy who had never played a minute in the NHL?

What wasn’t shameful however, was the wonderful story this was for David Ayres. Not only did the guy have less than a snowball’s chance in hell to play a second in the NHL, he became the oldest rookie goaltender to win a game in the big league, and he did so with absolutely no prep time whatsoever. I think he may also technically be the oldest rookie to ever play in the NHL. Oh, and he had also had a kidney transplant some 15 years earlier. Nice feel-good story indeed. Still, shameful the Leafs couldn’t bother to put out more of an effort than they did.

It’s curious that when this exact same thing happened last year, when 36-year-old Scott Foster played the final 14 minutes of a game versus Winnipeg, no one so much as batted an eye lash since he came in when the Hawks were already up by a few goals, and the outcome had been pretty much decided by that point, but now that an emergency goalie has actually added a “1” in his personal win column, everyone is crying foul, and that this kind of situation is an embarrassment to the league.

So, now that the NHL is likely going to implement a rule forbidding the use of emergency goalies like David Ayres and Scott Foster, the Leafs will likely remain the only team in NHL history to ever lose a game to a hockey-playing Zamboni driver, and for that this moment in time must forever be enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Shame.