Nobody Has Better Goalie Stories Than We Do

Every franchise has a couple of these. A backup who got hot. A guy who stood on his head for two weeks in April.

Carolina has four, and two of them are the strangest goaltending stories in the entire sport.

I don't think that's a coincidence anymore. I think it's just part of the lore of this organization.

2006: the backup who won the Conn Smythe

Cam Ward played 28 games in the regular season. He was backing up Martin Gerber and he wasn't even playing much down the stretch.

Then Game 2 against Montreal, Carolina's down in the series, and Peter Laviolette puts the 22-year-old in.

He never came out.

Ward won 15 games in that postseason. He won 14 in the regular season. He finished with more playoff wins than regular season wins, which is a sentence that shouldn't be possible.

He won the Conn Smythe as a rookie — one of only four rookie goalies to ever do it. At 22, he was the third player 21 or younger to win the award, in a group with Bobby Orr and Patrick Roy.

Game 7 against Edmonton, he made 22 saves, including the Pisani robbery with Carolina up 2-1 that everybody in this fanbase can still see.

Brind'Amour said afterward that he got to lift the Cup because of that kid. He wasn't being polite about it.

2020: the Zamboni driver

February 22nd in Toronto. James Reimer goes down. Then Petr Mrazek goes down.

Both goalies. Same game.

So Carolina calls in the emergency backup, which is a rule most fans had never thought about because it never actually matters. And the emergency backup that night is a 42-year-old building operator who drives the Zamboni for the Toronto Marlies.

David Ayres had a kidney transplant. He'd had skin cancer twice. He works maintenance.

He gave up two goals on the first three shots he faced, which is about what you'd expect from a guy who drove to the rink that morning to resurface ice.

Then he stopped all seven in the third. Carolina won 6-3.

He's the only emergency backup in NHL history to enter a game and get credited with the win. Oldest goalie ever to win his regular-season debut, at 42 years and 194 days.

And here's the part that makes it ours instead of just a fun story: he was working for Toronto's minor league team. The Leafs crowd was cheering for the guy who worked in their building, playing against them, for us.

2026: Andersen's three rounds

This one's less absurd but it might be my favorite.

Frederik Andersen's regular season was rough. 16-14-5, a .874 save percentage. There were nights you watched him and made a face.

Then the playoffs started and he went 13-2. A 1.89 goals-against, .910 save percentage, three shutouts in 16 games. He started every single minute of the first three rounds while Carolina swept Ottawa, swept Philadelphia, and beat Montreal in five.

A guy with a .874 in the regular season carried a team to the Cup Final. That doesn't happen. Save percentage is supposed to be sticky.

Then the Final came and it fell apart on him a 4.44 and a .815 through three games.

Which brings us to the last one.

2026, part two: the waiver claim

Brandon Bussi was on waivers in October. Florida put him out there and every team in the league could have had him for free. Thirty of them said no.

Carolina claimed him. He ended up starting 39 games because Andersen struggled and Kochetkov needed surgery, and he went 31-6-2 doing it.

And then he sat for four rounds.

Game 3 in Vegas, down 4-0, Brind'Amour pulls Andersen to start the third and Bussi comes in cold for his first playoff appearance ever. Stops the first 18 shots he faces including a Marner penalty shot. Carolina scores three goals in 39 seconds — a Cup Final record — and forces overtime. They lose in double OT anyway.

Then Rod scratches the goalie who was 13-2.

Bussi starts Game 4 and wins. Starts Game 5 and wins. Starts Game 6 and shuts them out, 22 saves, Cup.

He's the third first-year goalie in NHL history to post a shutout in a Cup-clinching game. The last one was Earl Robertson of Detroit in 1937.

Eighty-nine years.

What it adds up to

Two Cups in franchise history. Both of them won by a goalie who started the season as somebody's backup.

A 42-year-old maintenance worker with the only EBUG win in league history.

A guy who put up a .874 and then went 13-2.

I don't have a theory about why this keeps happening here. Maybe it's Brind'Amour being willing to make brutal decisions in June. Maybe it's a system that protects goalies well enough that anyone competent looks good behind it. Maybe it's just twenty years of variance landing in one place.

But no other franchise has this collection. Not one.

Other teams have great goalies. We have great goalie stories.