By admin 
MINNEAPOLIS – Peter Thome thought he was done with hockey.
He had left his post as a video coach with the Seattle Kraken’s minor league team and moved home to Minneapolis. Thome and his wife, Brianna, had a daughter, Parker, and he was working in sales remotely. He thought he wanted to go into medical device sales, with a specialty in face and brain surgery.
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“A lot of former athletes do this,” said Thome, 29. “I’m an adult. I have a daughter. I have a house. Here we go.”
But 20 minutes into his first surgery, he had to excuse himself because it was too graphic, and he passed out.
“This might not be it,” Thome told Brianna.
A year later, he has his dream job – thanks to an NHL policy change that opened a path back to hockey.
Thome is the Wild’s permanent emergency backup goalie, a position created this season by a rule requiring NHL teams to have a full-time, traveling employee in the role, known as the EBUG. Previously, every arena had an emergency goalie available to either team.
The goalies on call who made it to an NHL crease are part of hockey lore.
Accountant Scott Foster came on in relief late in the third period for Chicago, and the 36-year-old denied all seven shots he faced to help hold off Winnipeg 6-2 on March 29, 2018.
On Feb. 22, 2020, David Ayres was a 42-year-old Zamboni driver when he suited up for Carolina at Toronto, stopping 8 of 10 shots in almost 30 minutes of action to help the Hurricanes defeat the Maple Leafs 6-3.
“It’s so hockey, right?” Thome said. “I think it’s just really cool. Obviously, like the stories of Scott Foster and David Ayres are just great human stories, not even like hockey stories.”
The rule change means there will be fewer Foster and Ayres stories, and more stories like Thome’s. He practices with the Wild, attends every game and works as a hockey operations analyst.
“I understand why the NHL, where they’re coming from where it’s not the best look to just have a volunteer find himself in a National Hockey League game,” Thome said.
The youngest of three boys growing up in south Minneapolis, Thome loved hockey even though no one else in his family played.
At 11, he told his mom he wanted to take up the sport, but he struggled to skate at a pre-tryout clinic.
“I was like, ‘I can never put myself through that again,'” recalled Thome, and he noticed what he perceived as the goalies “meandering around the crease.”
Bingo.
“Ironically, you have to be a good skater to play goalie,” Thome said, but he kept at it.
He played at Benilde-St. Margaret’s before leaving for an under-16 team in Chicago that was looking for a goalie.
“I convinced my mom and dad to let me live with a strange family and play hockey for this fairly mediocre travel team in Chicago,” Thome said, “and it worked out great.”
After junior hockey in the North American Hockey League and United States Hockey League, Thome began his college career at North Dakota. He went 7-1-2 as a junior in 2019-20, and his .936 save percentage is the best single-season save percentage in North Dakota history.
“You feel a little bit like you’re in ‘Friday Night Lights’ for hockey instead of football,” he said.
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Thome spent the 2021-22 season at St. Thomas and studied computer science before debuting in the ECHL.
But after getting cut and traded twice in a three-week span, Thome was ready to move on. He was the director of hockey operations for the Chicago Steel of the USHL before joining the Coachella Valley Firebirds, the Kraken’s American Hockey League affiliate, as its video coach.
After Thome returned to Minneapolis, Seattle asked if he would be interested in becoming its EBUG and working in the research and development department.
“I can’t jump back into that life with my family,” Thome said. “We had a house. We live five blocks from my mom and dad. Grandma and Grandpa would be devastated.”
But Thome wondered what the Wild’s plans were for their EBUG, so he asked a friend who knew people with the team if he would mention his name. Two days later, Wild assistant GM Mat Sells called Thome.
To be eligible, a goalie can’t have NHL experience, have played more than 80 professional games or have played in a pro league during the past three seasons.
Thome would have come onboard just as the emergency goalie, but he also indicated his interest in hockey operations. That wasn’t on the Wild’s radar, but they liked the idea.
“I’m very grateful that they gave me the chance,” Thome said.
During practices, Thome is in his gear waiting in the wings until Jesper Wallstedt needs a break.
At morning skates, he will stay late on the ice with the scratches to help them get extra reps. For games, he is watching from the pressbox.
“If I get the bat signal, which I hope never happens, I’ll take the elevator downstairs, get dressed, maybe do a couple high knees and go on the bench,” Thome said. “Hopefully it doesn’t happen because it means someone got hurt.”
Connor Beaupre was the previous EBUG at Grand Casino Arena. The son of former North Stars goalie Don Beaupre, Connor Beaupre never played in a game. But he was beckoned from the pressbox during a 2017 game and had a jersey prepared for him after Devan Dubnyk was injured and Alex Stalock took over.
Thome considered himself to be in “pretty good shape for a 29-year-old father,” going on weekly runs.
But it took time for him to reactivate the muscles he didn’t use sitting at a desk all day, and he feels better now than he did when he started with the Wild. His experience as a video coach has also made him smarter.
“But I’m way slower and can react way slower than when I was playing,” said Thome, who like all EBUGs will wear No. 00.
He fits in more with the hockey operations staff than with the Wild players.
“I don’t want anyone to come away from a conversation with me being like, ‘This guy plays for the Wild,'” he said. “Absolutely not. As someone who tried most of his life to make the NHL, I have so much respect for the league [and] the players in that room.”
Still, in the unlikely event the Wild need him, Thome believes he’d fare just fine.
“Hopefully I never have to find out,” he said, “[but] I think I could do an adequate job.”
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This story was originally published October 13, 2026 at 2:44 AM.