The most important win at the Canadian Tire Centre on Thursday night happened at centre ice before the game.
On Hockey Fights Cancer Night, the Ottawa Senators dispensed with the tradition of having a fan ring the bell on the 200 level and welcomed a special visitor on the ice.
There likely wasn’t a dry eye in the house when 10-year-old Charley, a Senators superfan who has touched the hearts of many in the organization, rang the bell before the game against the Colorado Avalanche to celebrate her final cancer treatment.
Accompanied by Senators owner Michael Andlauer and Spartacat, Charley — a patient at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario — wore a wide smile as she dropped the ceremonial faceoff between captains Thomas Chabot and Gabriel Landeskog.
The 16,289 fans in attendance were on their feet for Charley. It was a reminder to everybody that some things in life mean a lot more than the final score of a hockey game.
“It was pretty awesome,” coach Travis Green said after Shane Pinto scored the winner in a 4-3 victory over the Avs . “We get so wrapped up in hockey, the job of it or the winning and losing, and you don’t get a lot of time to sit back and just think about how there’s a lot more to life than the winning and the losing.
“Even though it’s important to us and our jobs, that was a nice moment for sure. Especially knowing that we’ve seen her before, met her before, and she’s a battler. It was a nice night that way.”
Green first met Charley at the Senators Foundation Gala in January and he invited her on stage to read the lineup with him.
What has Charley learned through her battle?
Charley went through several rounds of radiation and chemotherapy, but she’s now in remission. She was on the TSN set with Lindsay Hamilton after the first period and was asked what her time at CHEO had taught her.
“Be grateful for the life you have,” Charley told Hamilton.
She couldn’t be more correct because you never know what people are going through. Charley was thrilled to get the chance to share the moment with the members of her favourite team.
“I was really nervous at first, like kind of shaking, because it’s a really big crowd. But then I got on the ice and saw it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, and then I just kind of went with the flow,” Charley added.
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The Senators were thrilled to share the moment with Charley and her family. She went downstairs after the game to spend some time with the likes of Steve Staios, the club’s president of hockey operations and general manager, whose wife Susannah completed a cancer journey in February 2024.
It was also nice that the Senators won, which meant Chabot and Tim Stutzle donated another $1,872 each to CHEO. They launched the CHEO charitable initiative last month by announcing that they’d donate $1,872 to the hospital for every win by the team this season.
“It was really special. Her ringing the bell was awesome to see, and we’re really happy for her,” Stutzle said.
Pinto, who scored twice on his 26th birthday, was thrilled for Charley, but noted it wasn’t easy to set that moment aside to play the game.
“It’s a little emotional. I think you just realize how lucky we have it. But it’s so cool that we did that for her,” Pinto said. “It’s just emotional, and I think you try to compartmentalize it a little bit, but you realize at the same time that there are things bigger than the game.”
