By Thirty-five days before the puck drops, there are no standings to worry about and no points on the line. But for several Tampa Bay Lightning players, hockey is already creating connections around their community.
For Anthony Cirelli and Gage Goncalves, it happened over sticks, smiles, and a game of ball hockey at the Children’s Cancer Center in Tampa.
The two Lightning forwards spent time with children and their families, talking, taking pictures, and playing alongside kids whose daily battles extend far beyond the rink.
“When they are inside going through stuff, they can talk about this experience and kinda smile at it,” Goncalves said.
That smile was really the point.
For an afternoon, hockey offered a distraction from treatments, appointments, and the realities that families dealing with childhood cancer know all too well. The players weren’t there to talk about the upcoming season or what might happen when the Lightning finally return to the ice. They were there to spend time with the kids.
From NHL veteran to local hockey day
And a few miles north, hockey was creating another, very different kind of connection.
At AdventHealth Center Ice in Wesley Chapel, veteran NHL defenseman John Carlson wasn’t there for an NHL practice. He was watching kids practice.
Carlson recently moved to the Tampa Bay area with his family, making him a newcomer not only to the Lightning but to a youth hockey community that local families spend years learning to navigate.
Now he is getting his own introduction.
Carlson signed his son up for a newly established Lightning youth team and stopped by the Wesley Chapel rink to get a look at the local hockey scene.
For someone who has spent nearly two decades around the NHL, it’s a different view of the game. No packed NHL arena. No television cameras following every shift. Just a dad standing at a local rink, watching youth hockey and figuring out where his family fits into their new community.
For the young players on the ice, of course, having an NHL defenseman watching practice isn’t exactly an ordinary day at the rink either.
The circumstances surrounding the two visits couldn’t be more different. Cirelli and Goncalves were using hockey to give children facing cancer a few moments of fun. Carlson was discovering the hockey community his own family is now becoming part of.
But both are reminders that a hockey team’s connection to its city doesn’t begin on opening night.
There are still 35 days before the puck drops.
Around Tampa Bay, though, the Lightning are already showing up.
