The NHL market brings to mind the incredible NHL debut in 2018 of Scott Foster, a Chicago accountant who ended up on the ice of an American professional league game almost by accident. A story ‘a la Bradbury’, which seems too much even as a plot of a film. But everything we are about to tell you really happened …
Before the transfer deadline in any American professional league all teams are divided into buyers e sellers. Who sells and downloads contracts, who buys and points to the playoffs. THE Chicago Blackhawkswithout too many ambitions for the season, they sold the goalkeeper Marc-Andre Fleury (also formerly Pittsburgh and Vegas) in Minnesota and announced Collin Delia as a new holder between the posts. An expected choice which, however, also had the merit of brushing up on it one of the most incredible stories of American sport of the modern era linked to Delia’s absolute debut in the NHL.
The Scott Foster Story
The one that we all have dreamed once in a lifetime and not just as children. Delia Californian goalkeeper considered a middle prospect signs a contract with Chicago, but obviously is initially sent to the minor Blackhawks. He plays at AHL and ECHL levels until in the 2017/18 season he is called to the first team by coach Quenneville because the owner Corey Crawford (a legend in Chicago with almost 600 games and 2 Stanley Cups won) begins to have some physical problems here and there . Delia actually only had to make the third in an emergency, then sit on the bench as Crawford’s substitute Anton Forsberg automatically became the starter on the first real injury in # 50. All normal until the evening of 29 March 2018 with the Winnipeg Jets the incredible happens in the city. Forsberg gets hurt in the warm-up and it’s time for Delia’s debut in the NHL, but that’s not the news at all.
In an emergency, with a one-day contract, he is sent on the sidelines an accountant of a Chicago company who had been a college hockey goalie, but never on a professional level. Scott Foster. 1982 Canadian who had started at Junior Hockey level in Ontario then 3 years at the University of Western Michigan. The first, so, the second the best with an average of 88% saves in the season and the third a disaster with only one time played, 7 shots faced and 3 goals conceded. Career ended there. No draft calls, not even for a camp in the minors and then take advantage of the university “piece of paper” and began working as an accountant, moving with his family to North Chicago.
14 minutes better than in a movie
Hockey remains just a passion to live on TV with an ice cold beer and played amateur tournaments. Fate had something very special in store for Scott. The NHL rules require that every team for a championship match must have a third goalkeeper on the roster even if in the stands. So that phone call came out of nowhere. For him, just putting the car in the United Center player parking lot, seeing Kane and Captain Toews up close and even having a jersey (even if he wasn’t supposed to wear it) with the number (# 90) was something unexpected and incredible. He was going up to the stands when they told him to dress for the race because the owner had had a problem. It doesn’t end there. In the third period Delia begins to feel cramps and leg problems. You have to go down on the ice. Log in in the last 14 minutes of the game and maintains the advantage he had inherited of 6-2. Seven shots, seven saves and no goals conceded. He is rewarded as Man of the Match with more than 20,000 spectators, who up to its entry on the ice had no idea that it was in the world, all standing singing his name at the United Center (that of Michael Jordan). The dream of all of us. Had we seen it at the cinema we would have said it was the usual Hollywood exaggeration and instead it’s all in an official NHL scoreboard. Ah, Foster didn’t make a single dollar because the contract he had signed was an amateur so no greenbacks, but he didn’t even notice. They gave him the shirt that all his teammates wanted to sign and… he went back to being an accountant.
Respect for an extraordinary history
Wonderfully sleepless night to review the game his wife had recorded and eat a breakfast taken in the middle of the night at a drive-in driving back to the northern suburbs, enjoying the city in a moment of his own. The next day headlines for him in many national newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and the NY Post, but he never wanted to give interviews. Just one two years ago at ESPN magazine. In the following season coach Q called him to do some pre-match training, the so-called morning skate, but never a contract and above all he never wanted to sign another one for a day as a third emergency goalkeeper when he left. the opportunity is presented. He had respect for an extraordinary story. Of his night and perhaps that of all of us. He wanted to keep his average of 100% in the NHL. It’s been 4 years. Delia has (momentarily) become the owner of the Blackhawks and at 40, he plays hockey in the Chicago suburbs, watches the Blackhawks on TV while opening a beer and continues to be an accountant. However, he had his night which made him enter, in 14 minutes, the wonderful history of the Chicago Blackhawks and the NHL.
