RALEIGH, N.C. _ More than seven hours before the Carolina Hurricanes' game against the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night, David Ayres walked into the Hurricanes locker room at PNC Arena with his wife by his side. The team had flown Ayres to Raleigh, to celebrate his improbable story, and while the longest dream of his life morphed into reality, parts of it still felt unreal.
It began three days earlier, on Saturday night in Toronto. That was when Ayres went from the upper deck to the ice; when he went from eating a Reuben sandwich in section 317 to playing goalie for the Hurricanes during the final 28 minutes of their victory against the Maple Leafs.
Ayres, from Whitby, Ontario, was 42-years-old, a former Zamboni driver and the current operations manager of the historic arena where the Maple Leafs used to play. He'd survived a kidney transplant. He'd lived his improbable dream of one day playing in an NHL game. Now everyone wanted to meet him.
At around 11:30 on Tuesday morning, a Hurricanes' staffer led him through the locker room, giving him a tour. Ayres paused to check out the weight room, then the lockers and then walked down a hall where some of the team's players received treatment in a training room. Ayres walked in to cheers.
"There he is," one of the players said, his voice rising.
"The legend's here!" another shouted.
"Oh, no," Ayres said, laughing, smiling, downplaying his newfound celebrity. "What a wild ride, man."
Andrei Svechnikov, the Hurricanes' 19-year-old right winger and one of the bright young stars of the NHL, sat on a table to Ayres' right. Svechnikov, the second overall selection in the 2018 NHL draft, had his entire career in front of him, and his future seemed limitless. Ayres, meanwhile, had likely just played in the only NHL game he'll ever play in _ and that it happened at all was enough of a miracle that his story became national news.
When the two met, Svechnikov appeared to be the one in awe.
"How was New York yesterday, good?" he asked.
Ayres smiled and shook his head. He told the story of being on Stephen Colbert's late-night show, and skating at Rockefeller Center. Ayres wore a black Hurricanes polo and hat and his wife, Sarah, stood near him, taking in this scene _ her husband casually chit-chatting with his former teammates, for one game, in an NHL locker room.
Soon Ayres was in another room, meeting with Tom Dundon, the Hurricanes' owner, and Rod Brind'Amour, their head coach. They all talked like they'd been friends for a long time. Brind'Amour knew the players had something special in the works for the postgame _ a special Zamboni ride. But, he said more than once, "We've got to win."
Instead they suffered a 4-1 defeat. No Storm Surge. Ayres' life moved closer to returning to normalcy. Fans filed out of PNC Arena. Some of them wore white Hurricanes' shirts with the No. 90 and Ayres' name on the back. Days later, it all still felt surreal.
