from Jason Buckland at the New York Times,

The impostor took the ice, his face concealed, and kept his head down. He did all he could to blend in.

At a closed N.H.L. skate, a tuneup scrimmage during the lockout of 2004, some two dozen players glided about the rink in the training facility of the Chicago Blackhawks. The pros didn’t know it, but someone else had crashed their practice.

His name was Nello Ferrara, and back then, in hockey circles, that did not mean much. Thirteen years ago, Ferrara was still just a wannabe in the sport, a 27-year-old bruiser with but a handful of junior and minor league games on his résumé....

Ferrara decided to call in a favor. He had grown close with a Blackhawks player named Kyle Calder, who had golfed and skated recreationally with Ferrara for years. If Ferrara had the stones to try this, Calder could not resist helping.

On the day of the skate, as the N.H.L. players arrived at the rink, Ferrara slipped into the facility through a door on the opposite side of the arena. “Snuck in like Batman,” he later joked. Calder had secured all the official gear he could — Blackhawks pants, gloves, a practice jersey, any equipment he could find, Calder recalled, that would help Ferrara appear to be a bona fide member of the team.

Ferrara dressed on his own in a separate locker room. There, he said, he waited. Finally, he donned a Blackhawks helmet with a visor that obscured much of his face, and when the N.H.L. players took the ice and began to glide in circles, Ferrara opened a door to the rink. He hopped onto the ice, lowered his gaze, and hoped no one would notice.

As the cool ice passed beneath him, it was time to prove that he belonged.

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