For the entire month of November, the National Hockey League dedicates game coverage, donations, merchandise and fundraising to support cancer research. They coin this month “Hockey Fights Cancer.” A CSR campaign they’ve been doing for years. It’s initiatives like this, that allows the NHL to touch the lives of fans who’ve dealt with personal issues.
Well, what happens when the tragedy of cancer invades the life of one of the league’s players. This happened to Brian Boyle. Boyle, center-man for the New Jersey Devils, was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia on Sept. 19 back in 2017. The news rocked the emotions of his children, wife, beloved NJ Devils community, and the NHL as a whole.
However, Boyle had reported that just before the 2018-19 season, and after much medical treatment, Boyle’s cancer was in remission.
He told NHL.com in October that “…I feel really good. It was kind of the way the progression was happening the last few tests. When I told my wife, she was excited and got emotional.”
One of the most amazing aspects of Boyle’s perseverance was that even with the diagnosis the doctors gave him, Boyle still competed in 69 games during the 2017-18 season. Imagine, playing one of the toughest professional sports: with cancer. Boyle’s tenacity had inspired ma
ny athletes all around the world.
About two weeks after Boyle had released the news of his cancer remission, the Devils traveled to face the Pittsburgh Penguins, on non-other, than the Penguins “Hockey Fights Cancer” night.
On this night, Brian Boyle hit a huge milestone in his NHL career. His very first hat trick. 
The Devils then took home a 5-1 win over East Coast rival.
The bottom line here is that the NHL couldn’t have planned something of this type of hype. In fact, no sport could have. There’s something special about sports. That despite all of the negative going on in this world and everything that feels so bad, sports have a way of bringing out the positive in our everyday lives.
Athletes are not untouchable, they live their lives and experience the ups and the downs just like everyone else. There is something so incredibly tangible, however, when we can see athletes immerse themselves into the “everyday” type. They transform from celebrities into people we can relate to. This subsequently transforms the sport into an aspect of real-world issues. The “Hockey Fights Cancer” campaign touches the lives of the fans but what we don’t hear very often, how it touches the lives of its players.
Brian Boyle’s hat trick is tangibility of the real-world and the positive connection of hockey perfectly molding together to create a narrative that inspires sports fans. Boyle’s first ever hat-trick will be something that he never forgets.
Boyle’s post game interview can be found at this link: https://www.nhl.com/devils/video/t-277437418
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