Stanley Cup Champs Offer Young Fan a Bit of "Heaven"

“Hockey players are different people,” Laila Anderson says. “They’re from heaven.”

The 11-year-old with an autoimmune disease was befriended by the St. Louis Blues this season as they made an improbable run to the Stanley Cup. After the Blues lost Game Six at home, it appeared that their favorite fan would have to watch the deciding contest at home on TV. Yet once her doctor gave the go-ahead, the team flew Laila to Boston, where she was able to cheer them on and afterward kiss the Cup. Twice no less.

As for hockey players being from heaven? Yep, Laila has that right.

When my brother, Eric, was suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia a half-century ago, he was visited at Roswell Park Hospital by his favorite hockey player, Jim Schoenfeld of the Buffalo Sabres. (Eric was involved in the first clinical trials that helped take ALL from a 10 percent survival rate to the 90 percent cure rate it has today.)

Schoenfeld was a rookie and this was one of his initial hospital visits. Eric had no hair by then and his skin had grown pale to the point of being translucent due to rounds of chemotherapy. But his favorite player greeted him like an old friend, giving Eric a transistor radio, the Sabres’ yearbook and a stick signed by the team. He asked my brother what position he played, and Eric replied, “Wing, but I don’t score many goals.”

“Neither do I,” Schoenfeld smiled.

Together they flipped through the yearbook as my mother and several of the nurses stood by. Before leaving, Schoenfeld adjusted the radio dial to the Sabres’ flagship station. “That way you can hear how I do,” the player said.

A few nights later, the Sabres were on the road in Chicago. The Blackhawks dominated the game, well on their way to victory when Schoenfeld scored with only minutes remaining. It was his fourth of the season and the final one he would tally that year.

Was my brother listening? No one knows for sure, but the transistor radio remained on his nightstand at Roswell Park until he passed a few weeks later.

The radio, yearbook and signed stick came home with my parents.

Decades later, I spoke with Schoenfeld after a New York Rangers practice during another playoff series.

“I remember,” he said after I told him who I was. “Your brother was about the bravest kid I ever met.”

Then Schoenfeld asked about my mother, how the family was doing. Too soon the doors at the far end of the rink opened and the Zamboni prepared to resurface the ice.

“Your brother,” Schoenfeld said, beginning to skate away, “deserved a lot better.”

Then he was gone, shooting the remaining pucks into the net as the Zamboni began to lay down a new coat of fresh ice.

Jim Schoenfeld and Eric Wendel at Roswell Park Hospital in 1973.

Source: Jane Wendel, used with permission

Stick signed by the Buffalo Sabres, which hangs on Bryan Wendel's office wall nearly a half century later.

Source: Bryan Wendel, used with permission