Riley Tufte gets scratched in 1st NHL game back home after spending call-up money on tickets for family

This is just a sad and quite frustrating story. On Thursday night, Dallas Stars’ Riley Tufte was set to play his very first NHL game in his home state of Minneapolis. He was the 25th overall pick in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft and spent the past two seasons in the AHL, but it was time on Thursday to get on NHL ice for his home debut.

After the morning skate, Stars head coach Rick Bowness even mentioned that he would use the same lineup as the previous two games, when Tufte was with Radek Faksa and Luke Glendening.

Tufte was excited, took the ice for warmups, but then became a late healthy scratch as Bowness decided to insert Joel Kiviranta’s speed and energy into the lineup against Minnesota instead. Kiviranta was a scratch for the last two games.

Not only is the Bowness’ move heartbreaking in the sense that he got Tufte’s hopes up, but even more because it was revealed that the 23-year-old spent a lot of money on tickets to the game, and even asked for the help of Wild forward and friend Nick Bjugstad to get his family and friends in the building.

Stars fans were terribly upset with Bowness’ decision to pull Tufte out of the lineup, even more so than the humiliating 7-2 loss at the hands of the Wild.

“When we left here this morning, he was playing,” Bowness said. “I can’t do anything about that. I get here at 4 o’clock, they’re telling me these guys are in now. It changes everything. This morning, Riley was playing. I can’t do anything about that.”

“He’ll be back in that league, and he’ll be back in there the next time we come to Minnesota. At some point, he’ll play here. Tonight, we wanted to put a little more speed in the lineup, and Kivi sat out a couple. He got the call.”

I guess Bowness, we can call this karma…