Teddy Bear Toss No Goal: OHL fans cover ice, even though goalie made save (VIDEO)

It's been a trying enough season for Justin Nichols without having fans cover the ice with stuffed animals when he actually made a great save.

As the overage goalie for a Guelph Storm team that has two wins in 24 Ontario Hockey League outings, Nichols has surely felt his share of frustration. One can only imagine it must have felt tragicomic last Friday when the 20-year-old got the paddle down to rob Kingston Frontenacs centre Warren Foegele of what looked like the first goal of the game 1:19 into the second period. The goal judge turned on the red light signalling goal and Foegele had his stick in the air, so herrrrrrre came the stuffed animals, as per the Teddy Bear Toss tradition of throwing the donations on to the ice after the home team's first goal.

"This will be very disappointing if they call this off," TV Cogeco Kingston commentator Tim Cunningham observed. "What, do they throw the teddy bears back into the crowd?"

A barrage of plush bears is not as dangerous as thousands of pretzels, but at the same time the Frontenacs could have used the services of Hall of Famer Whitey Ford to plead for some, some kind of sanity.

Then again, people's hearts were in the right place, and pausing a Teddy Bear Toss is like getting toothpaste back in the tube. The game ended up being delayed about seven minutes while Frontenacs players such as Florida Panthers first-round pick Lawson Crouse assisted with the cleanup effort.

It wound up taking Kingston another six minutes of game play to get a goal past Nichols, on their 27th shot of the game. The Foegele line with wings Jared Steege and Jason Robertson clicked for that goal, so everything was wrapped up in a neat little package, then.  

Nichols wound up making 40 saves in the Storm's 3-1 loss (with an empty-netter). The St. Catharines, Ont., native has a .917 save percentage despite being on a 20th-place team. No need to check it twice if Nichols is first on your list of OHL overages that you feel deserve something nice.

(Video courtesy TV Cogeco Kingston.)

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @naitSAYger.