The equipment manager story happened, too [1]!. In that case, he only went on to play the last 8 seconds of the game so it wasn't as crazy as this occurrence since Scott got to play 13 minutes of NHL hockey.
In fact, down 3-1 with under 2 minutes left, it's very common to have an empty net in order to have an extra forward out to enable potentially scoring last-ditch effort goals! The only reason I could see for them playing Alves at all in this situation was if the faceoff with 8 seconds left was in the defensive zone for the Hurricanes.