A crowd of 14,092 would eventually make its way to Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto that Wednesday night late in October of 1957. Len Broderick was there, on hand (so he thought) to watch the hometown Maple Leafs take on the Montreal Canadiens, the reigning Stanley Cup champions. Toronto-born Broderick, who’d just turned 19, was a student at the University of Toronto who also kept the nets for Toronto’s Junior-A Marlboros, with whom he’d won a Memorial Cup in 1956.

Broderick never got to his seat at the Gardens that night. Instead of settling in to watch the evening’s proceedings, he’d soon be lacing on skates and pads to head out on the ice wearing Jacques Plante’s own number one Canadiens’ sweater to play — and win — his first and only NHL game.

Teams still didn’t carry regular back-up goaltenders in those years. In case Ed Chadwick fell injured, the Toronto Maple Leafs kept practice goalie Gerry McNamara on stand-by. As mandated by the NHL, the Leafs also had a second goaltender on call for the visiting team. That’s where Broderick came in.

It was 7.30 when he got to the rink. Leafs’ PR manager Spiff Evans was waiting to tell him that the Canadiens needed a goaltender and he was probably it. Broderick thought it was a joke. “Don’t laugh,” Evans told him. “I’m serious.”

Only a week had passed since Plante’s return to the ice after a sinus operation and now he was fluey and his chronic asthma was acting up. Gerry McNamara was older, 23, more experienced and if the Leafs could track him down, then he’d be the man to take the Montreal net. They couldn’t; at twenty to eight, Broderick was told he was the man. “Holy cow was I surprised when I heard I was going in there,” Broderick later told The Toronto Daily Star’s Gordon Campbell.

 In his Star report on the game, Jim Proudfoot wrote that Broderick “staged a tremendous display of technical hockey that, for the most part, was lost on the crowd, but which dazzled and disorganized the last-place Leafs.”

The Globe and Mail’s Jim Vipond wrote that Montreal “demonstrated the best five-man defense outside of pro football to protect their stand-in goalie.”

Proudfoot picked out Dollard St. Laurent for particular praise, and Doug Harvey was good, too; Montreal’s defencemen rarely let Leaf shooters gets within shouting distance, he wrote. Broderick didn’t have to make a single save in the opening ten minutes of the second period

Leaf wingers Barry Cullen and Bob Pulford beat him late in the game, while Canadiens were shorthanded. “It’s doubtful if even Plante could have stopped either of those drives,” Proudfoot advised.

Montreal coach Toe Blake: “We gave him great protection all right, but the kid got us started on the right foot with a couple of big saves early in the game when we really needed them.” The Leafs’ Frank Mahovlich broke in while there was still no score. “Suppose he scores,” Blake said. “Leafs have the first goal and you know what that can mean in an NHL game. Instead, Broderick made a good stop. That was a mighty important play.”

“I was really nervous,” Broderick told The Star, “but once I made that stop on Mahovlich I felt all right.”

Canadiens’ GM Frank Selke took down Broderick’s address: he wanted to send him a thank-you. “If ever any proof of the honesty of hockey was needed, this was it,” Selke said. “Here’s a boy, belonging to another team, who goes in and plays terrific hockey.”

Only two pairs of goaltending brothers have made it to the NHL: Len and his late younger brother Ken, who’d later suit up for the Minnesota North Stars and Boston Bruins, along with Dave and Ken Dryden.

Len Broderick never played another NHL game. He turned 79 this week. For many years he’s made his home in Greenville, South Carolina, where he’s CFO of a financial services company. In 2015, I called him up to ask him about his night as a Montreal Canadien. He started by telling me about the pay:

They used to pay me, I think it was $25 a game, to go and watch the games. We sat in Connie Smythe’s box, so they knew where we were.

My dad had not been to a Leafs game for a number of years and his boss that day had asked him if he wanted to go — he had an extra ticket.

So we went around and picked up his boss. I was supposed to be there at seven for the eight o’clock game. We were a little late — I got there about seven-fifteen. At the gate they were jumping around, and then they saw me and they said, hey, get in here you’re playing, we gotta find your equipment. [Laughs] Jacques Plante had an asthma attack and you’re it.

My dad had no idea until I came out on the ice.

In the visitors’ dressing room, they gave him Plante’s sweater, number 1, to wear.

Maurice Richard came over and sat down and started talking to me, I guess thinking he was settling me down but … He introduced me to some of the players. He just sat and talked while I got dressed.

Well, everything was happening so fast, I didn’t have a lot of time to do a lot of thinking about it. It was get ready and get out there.

I didn’t see Plante — I never saw him. I assume he wasn’t there.

Toe Blake came over to shake hands. He was chasing after Geoffrion because Geoffrion was throwing up — he’d told him not to eat that pasta. He was busy with that.

What kind of goalie were you?

Stand-up. Not like they do it now, butterfly. I had Turk Broda as a coach and he was a stand-up goaltender. He would kneel down behind the net and watch people shooting on me. He taught me. And he usually picked me and drove me to practice, so I got to know him pretty well.

What was it like to skate out in front of an NHL crowd?

It was certainly different. The game where we beat the Junior Canadiens to win the Memorial Cup, we had the largest crowd they ever had in Maple Leaf Gardens. They didn’t play overtime, so we played an eighth game, it was a Wednesday night, I remember it: they were standing four and five deep in the greys. So it didn’t bother me, a big crowd.

I had gone to Leaf camp that year and in shooting practice there, Frank Mahovlich would come down, dipsy-doodling, and he kept putting the puck between my legs — to the point where he and I were both laughing about it. I wasn’t stopping it, and he just kept putting it in.

So fairly early in the game, he got a breakaway. I was determined, I said to myself, he is not putting that things between my legs. So I really kept my legs tight together. He tried it, of course, and as he was circling, he looked back. You could see the surprise on his face that he didn’t have a goal.

That was pretty early in the game.

Once I was in the game, I was in it. I had a shutout with about ten minutes to go. It was a great team I was playing with — probably one of the greatest NHL teams ever. I had Doug Harvey and Tom Johnson in front of me. They blocked a lot of shots. That’s what they did — they were very good.

I knew all the Leafs because I’d been up at training camp with them. I remember, there was a scramble around the net and I can remember Bob Pulford saying, ‘Lenny, what are you doing to us?’

Broderick faced 22 shots before the night was over, compared to the 38 that the Leafs’ Chadwick saw at the other end. The final score: Broderick’s Canadiens 6, Toronto 2. The winning goaltender had his photo taken after the game, standing between the Richard brothers, Henri and Maurice. Some fuss would follow as the week went on, but at the Gardens, Broderick just packed up his gear, and handed over Plante’s sweater. Then he drove home with his dad.

He was pretty pleased with the whole thing.

There was a lot of press and that the next day. It was great. I was at the University of Toronto at the time, in Commerce, and there was a film crew over there, got me out of class.

Frank Selke sent me a very nice letter. If [an emergency] goaltender played, they only had to pay him $100. He sent a cheque for $150. He talked about how it wasn’t as easy to go against your own team.

On their way to winning another Stanley Cup the following spring, the Canadiens would get the help of another emergency goaltender, John Aiken, in Boston. As for Len Broderick, he played another year for the Junior-A Marlboros before leaving the nets for good. Did he think of pursuing an NHL career?

They weren’t paying any money. There were no masks. And I just didn’t feel it was worth it. At that time, for a first-year player, it was 8,000 a year. Frank Mahovlich, even, that’s what he got. Staff Smythe called me at home, he wanted me to come to Leaf camp, and I said, how much are you going to pay me? The first year was eight thousand. I was in the chartered accountant course at the time and I just said, I gotta get past this.

I probably had 75 stitches in my face, top of the head, over the years. [Chuckles] Eventually I just thought, why should I get banged around and hammered for 8,000 a year?

Any regrets?

No, not much. I’m very happy with my career. I have two or three hockey cards to remember that night. When my brother came through, I guess it was three years later, salaries had gone up quite a bit. That’s when they were starting to go up. And he got to play with the Canadian Olympic team, out of the University of British Columbia. That wasn’t there when I finished.

[A version of this post first appeared on slapshotdiaries.com. The interview has been condensed and edited.]