Scott Foster on emergency appearance with Blackhawks and his most tense in-game moment

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One year ago today, history was made at the United Center.

It was March 29, 2018. Anton Forsberg was expected to be the starter vs. Winnipeg but got injured before the game, which forced Collin Delia to make his NHL debut earlier than anticipated. And with 14:01 left in the third period and the Blackhawks leading 6-2, the unthinkable happened.

A 36-year-old accountant named Scott Foster entered the game for an injured Delia as the emergency goaltender. He stopped all seven shots he faced to preserve the victory for the Blackhawks, and was named the No. 1 star of the game. It was epic. 

And then Foster went dark. He disappeared from the spotlight and we didn't hear from him again.

In the latest Hawks Talk Podcast, Pat Boyle sat down with Foster for nearly 30 minutes to relive that memorable night and took us behind the scenes of what transpired.

Here's a snippet:

On getting the nod:

"The first thing I remember is, we’re watching the game on TV and I was actually sitting beside Forsberg and [Corey] Crawford at the time, and Delia takes a shot," Foster said. "And there’s probably like a joke or something made about where he got hit with that puck and that it kind of shook him up or something like that. That’s when he goes down and now he’s not getting up. That’s when your heart rate starts going and you start to think, ‘There’s gotta be another guy between me and him, right? One of these two guys suits up and goes in for this game, right?'

"And then a trainer came running down and told me to start to stretch, which is something that probably doesn’t happen too often at men’s league. Then [assistant coach] Kevin Dineen’s running down the hallway, yelling at you to get your helmet because now you’re going in. So I had to make the walk down the hallway into this locker room and start grabbing my gear and my helmet and gloves and start getting ready to make the journey out the tunnel.”

On what he did during TV timeouts:

“Those were probably my most tense moments on the ice, actually. When the game is going on, you have something to focus on, you’re playing, you’re just trying to do your thing. But then there’s these moments in time where you can either glance around the crowd, do you skate to the bench? I remember just trying not to get run over by the ice crew. And I think I pondered actually going to the bench and I’m like, ‘Well then these guys are going to start talking to me and that’s probably the last thing I need to do right now.’

"I even remember trying to grab a drink of water and I let my eyes glance up through from the ice level up to the rafters in the United Center and I was like, ‘OK, no more of that! This place is huge. That’s a lot of cell phones taking pictures of you right now. Let’s not do any of that anymore.’ It was just kind of, take a moment to yourself and honestly just try to block a lot of stuff out.”

Listen to the full 1-on-1 interview here.

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