The Washington Capitals have named their full-time emergency backup goaltender.
Connor Leslie, a Leesburg, Virginia native and former player for the Washington Little Caps, will be the club’s first-ever EBUG under the new requirements in the CBA that say all 32 NHL teams must identify and hire a full-time EBUG and heavily restrict the type of player who can qualify as an emergency backstop.
Chief among those restrictions is that the netminder must not have played in more than 80 professional hockey games or played professional hockey in the prior three seasons. Leslie has done neither, as his last on-ice experience came for Amherst College, a Division III NCAA program in Massachusetts.
Leslie, 24, has been seen around the Capitals before, attending a few practices last season in his noticeable purple-and-white gear, and has worked with the team’s goaltending coach, Scott Murray, in the past. He was one of the team’s practice and skills-session fill-ins in early March, when head coach Spencer Carbery gave number-one goaltender Logan Thompson a day off after the Olympics.
The 6-foot-2, 185-pound goalie wrapped up his stint at Amherst in 2025, going 4-7-1 with a 3.01 goals-against average, a .893 save percentage, and one shutout in his final college campaign. Before heading to college, Leslie spent five years with the Little Caps and made a brief stop with the National Collegiate Development Conference’s Twin City Thunder in 2020-21.
“In general, this was like a full circle moment,” Leslie told the Capitals’ Mike Vogel. “It’s pretty surreal, because obviously growing up playing eight years of Little Caps, it was one of those periods of my life that really established how much I loved hockey. And just being around the culture, getting to look up to a lot of these Caps players who were at the rink when I was practicing, and stuff like that was really cool. And now, to get the chance to be around them and support them in whatever way I can this upcoming year is a really cool opportunity, and I’m just so blessed for that.”
Before the upcoming 2026-27 NHL season, each team was required to have an EBUG on hand and in the arena for each home game, available to play for either team that night. Washington had regularly employed former Hershey Bears goalie-turned-food-critic Parker Milner as their EBUG, but he has far more than 80 games of pro experience and recently moved back to South Carolina, where he once played for the ECHL’s Stingrays.
“I really want to say just how much respect I have for Parker Milner, who was recently just with the Caps,” Leslie said. “I’m basically taking over that position in his place. And when I got to meet him on one of the days that they brought me in to meet everyone and tour the facility and everything, he was the one who showed me around, and he was by far one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”
Leslie, per Vogel, was a big Braden Holtby fan growing up and originally planned to enter federal law enforcement after majoring in psychology and political science in college. Instead, he’ll now be donning the double-zero jersey number for the Capitals and getting as close a look as possible at his childhood favorite team.
