G&D at 25: NHLPA Goals & Dreams keeps creating memorable moments, big and small

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The gear has been unloaded by grateful communities from remote northern locales pulled behind snow machines and loaded onto crowded trains roaring to as far as the Siberian landscape.

For a quarter century, brand new hockey equipment, rink boards, ice machines and all manner of hockey-related infrastructure, has appeared in communities in need of help, causing children, parents, coaches and community leaders to weep openly in a shared joy no matter where in the vast hockey world they might live.

This is NHLPA Goals & Dreams. And the numbers associated with the National Hockey League Players’ Association’s far-reaching charitable program, the largest grassroots hockey program in the world, are almost too big to comprehend.

More than $26 million donated to help bring hockey to boys and girls, disadvantaged and marginalized children who might never have otherwise had the opportunity to feel that singular moment of holding a hockey stick for the first time and gliding onto a fresh sheet of ice in 40 different countries around the world.

Hundreds of players have donated their time to help in the 30 to 50 programs supported by NHLPA Goals & Dreams each year, all with little or no fanfare, a testament to the very personal nature of many of the projects and the people those projects touch.

“It’s a phenomenal, just an amazing program. It’s changed my family’s life,” Cheryl Weichel explained. Weichel is an educational assistant at a high school near Kitchener, Ontario.

The family could not have afforded to put their kids in youth hockey. But when their son, Owen, was six he asked his parents if he could sign up for the Pioneer Park Panthers Hockey Program that has provided free hockey equipment and experiences to first-time players for more than two decades thanks in large part to NHLPA Goals & Dreams.

“He loved it, absolutely loved it,” Weichel said.

Players in the program are recognized not for the number of goals they score or how fast they skate but how hard they work. One day Owen, who is now 16, was awarded the coveted hard hat for his diligence.

“He actually slept with the hard hat on,” his mother said. “It just made him feel so special.”

Younger sister Kaydence followed in her brother’s footsteps when she was in senior kindergarten, and she is now 13 and part of the Panthers’ junior coaching program that allows kids to keep connected to the program even after they have aged out.

In the beginning Weichel did not know how to put gear on her kids, but she learned.

Now she helps new parents, many of whom are new to Canada and experiencing the game for the first time, navigate their way through the strange new world of shin guards, gloves and helmets.

“It’s almost a rite of passage,” Weichel said. “Just the joy that they have, it’s beautiful.”

“I appreciate it so much,” she added. “It’s just opened so many doors for my children, myself, my husband. It’s more than just learning hockey a little bit. It’s lifelong skills. It’s teaching my kids to give back.”

Steve Sanderson officially started Pioneer Park Panthers Hockey in 2002, although the long-time school custodian had been trying to scare up free hockey gear for needy local school kids for even longer.

In some ways, Sanderson and the Pioneer Park Panthers perfectly illustrate the NHLPA Goals & Dreams ethos.

“Without NHLPA Goals & Dreams we wouldn’t be here,” Sanderson said. “When I applied that first year, I was almost ready to pack it in. They came at the right time.”

That first shipment of new equipment led to other donations.

“Before I knew it, I had 100 kids on the ice,” Sanderson said.

Now, close to 4,000 kids have taken part and there’s a waiting list to join the junior coaches program.

“I hope they keep doing this for many years to come,” Sanderson said.

As the NHLPA celebrates the 25th anniversary of NHLPA Goals & Dreams, Sanderson need not worry about the future.

NHLPA Goals & Dreams was born in the Players’ Association offices in 1999 under the guidance of long-time Executive Director Bob Goodenow.

Staff recall Goodenow, whose public persona was that of a tough as nails negotiator and tireless defender of players’ rights, challenging them to come up with a plan for players to give back to the game – especially at the grassroots level.

“Bob said, ‘think big, we’ll get the money,’” Hockey Hall of Fame player and former NHLPA employee Mike Gartner recalled.

The staff returned several times to Goodenow with estimates on how much funding they would need. A few hundred thousand dollars annually? One million?

Bigger, Goodenow counselled.

The first commitment to fund NHLPA Goals & Dreams was for $3 million a year for five years.

The name has remained unchanged. And in some ways the spirit of the program has remained unchanged as well.

Making a profound impact on the lives of people in need through the game of hockey without making a big deal out of it.

“We didn’t want to pump our own tires,” Gartner said. “There were no ulterior motives, the motives were pure.”

“It took a long time for people to even realize we were doing it,” Gartner added with a laugh.

Gartner brought NHLPA employee Devin Smith over from the communications department to serve as the lead hand on the NHLPA Goals & Dreams tiller, a position he held up until recently when he took on additional duties in the PA’s business department that have required his full time and focus, resulting in Andrew Wolfe leading the program into its next quarter century.

“The beauty of NHLPA Goals & Dreams is that it’s completely altruistic,” Smith said. “It’s not about a brand, it’s kind of agnostic with that, it’s just helping the people that needed it.”

In the beginning, monies were made available for big ticket items like ice resurfacing machines, refrigeration plants, board construction and other arena improvements. Now the budget goes almost exclusively to brand new equipment – often the greatest impediment to young people and their families playing the game.

What remains constant, though, is the enthusiasm the players themselves have had for the program. “Just the reaction from the players over the years,” Smith said. “That hasn’t changed at all.”

For many players, NHLPA Goals & Dreams has been a vehicle to honour their own paths to the NHL, whether it is helping with projects in communities in big urban centers or in tiny rural towns and villages around the globe.

From the moment New Jersey Devils netminder Jake Allen came into the NHL in 2012, he has been impressed by how the NHLPA has kept the membership abreast of their initiatives, especially G&D.

“One thing the PA has done a great job of is to really promote this opportunity for the players to have at their fingertips,” Allen said.

Over the years, Allen has become an important figure in New Brunswick’s charitable community through his Program34 foundation. He has relied on NHLPA Goals & Dreams on multiple occasions to help turn concept to reality.

“It’s about playing. It’s about what the game means to people and what the game does for people mentally, physically, emotionally,” Allen said.

Growing up in St. Stephen, a small town in the southern part of New Brunswick in Atlantic Canada, Allen had to borrow goalie gear when he started the position that would become his passion and his career.

So, it was fitting that, with the help of NHLPA Goals & Dreams, he was able to help the local hockey community with brand new goalie gear, gear that almost certainly would not have been available to young aspiring netminders.

“It’s where it comes full circle,” Allen said. “I almost did the same thing. Put the pads on, the rest is history. It changed my life.”

The first NHLPA Goals & Dreams donation – application form #001 is still somewhere in an NHLPA Goals & Dreams filing cabinet – was in Pilot Mound, Manitoba.

The community there had purchased an old arena used by hydro workers and ferried the pieces to rebuild the Pilot Mound rink in their town.

NHLPA Goals & Dreams helped make that arena a reality.

From the beginning, this has never been about backing up a truck (or snowmobile cart) and dropping off a few sticks and skates and calling it a day.

The application process is rigorous and demands much of the applicants and the people who will put plans into action.

“Tell us what you want to do, and we’ll try to make it work,” Smith explained. “It’s not a full-on grant. We’ll give you the assist. You’ve got to put the puck in the open net.”

Twenty-five years later and many miles traveled, so many moments of unexpected joy and gratitude. So many long-lasting relationships made and opportunities for multiple generations of hockey players.

For many who have been touched by an NHLPA Goals & Dreams moment, “the pride, it’s going to live forever,” Smith added.

As one example of such a moment, Smith was helping referee a pick-up game for kids who had just received their new gear at an event in Minnesota, aided by Minnesota native and current Boston Bruin Charlie Coyle.

One of the kids looked up at Smith before the face-off and whispered, “I’ve never played in a real game before.”

Sometimes the legacy of NHLPA Goals & Dreams is not in the gear but in keeping other legacies alive.

Like Scotts’ Memorial Rink in upstate New York, an arena honoring two young hockey players (both named Scott) who died in separate car crashes in the 1990s.

Smith recalled talking to the mother of one of the boys at an NHLPA Goals & Dreams event in the community, and how their family’s dream was to keep their son’s memory alive through the game he loved.

NHLPA Goals & Dreams was part of that legacy, helping to convert an outdoor rink into an indoor rink that has since become a thriving youth and community hockey centre.

Every year Smith receives a note from that boy’s mother, just touching base. A sliver of light shining from a moment of incredible loss.

From the get-go it was important for NHLPA Goals & Dreams to reflect the makeup of the player membership. That meant ensuring that youngsters in Sweden, Finland and Russia could just as easily find themselves on the receiving end of NHL players’ largesse as Canadian or American kids.

One early memorable trip to Siberia illustrated both the challenges and the impact of NHLPA Goals & Dreams.

After a trip to Moscow and a harrowing flight on a Russian commercial jet, the NHLPA contingent including Smith and Gartner had to board a very crowded train to their final destination with all the brand new gear they brought with them in tow.

At one point, the NHLPA group was asked to provide bribes to officials to get the gear to its final destination, but Gartner explained that they were here to give away gear and would not be paying a bribe to complete the transaction.

When they arrived, the NHLPA group were surprised to find that there was a great deal of skepticism about their visit. Former Russian league netminder Rashid Davydov broached the subject directly at dinner – what did the North Americans want? How much? In what form should the payment be made?

No, no, Gartner and Smith explained. These new bags containing new skates and full equipment including much-needed new goalie gear were a gift from NHL players. There was no payment needed or expected.

Davydov scoffed.

In Russia, he said, there is a saying, “The free cheese is in the mouse trap only.”

When the bags were delivered and the kids began putting on the equipment there were tears of joy, if not disbelief, that such a thing was possible.

“To see the looks on their faces when we opened the bags,” Gartner said. “Kids were crying, and families were hugging.”

Later, Davydov would visit North America and stay with Smith at his home and the ‘free cheese’ comment would live on as a kind of touchstone for the NHLPA Goals & Dreams group.

Gartner has long moved on from his role with the NHLPA – in fact he was recently announced as the new chairman of the board for the Hockey Hall of Fame. But the father and grandfather has occasionally come out of retirement, so to speak, to join in on an NHLPA Goals & Dreams trip in February 2020 to the Yukon.

Sometimes he will even find himself in a rink where he will see an NHLPA Goals & Dreams plaque or logo and he is reminded of the importance of the program he helped launch.

“You can feel nothing but positive experiences and good feelings,” Gartner said. “It’s been nothing but good. Just do the math. It’s millions and millions of dollars of help. It’s just a great program. It’s a feel- good program and it’s a real program.”

What does the next 25 years look like for NHLPA Goals & Dreams?

Just like the make-up of the NHLPA membership, which is forever changing, NHLPA Goals & Dreams has new blood and new ideas on how to chart a course forward.

“I think it’s really important,” NHLPA Executive Director Marty Walsh said of NHLPA Goals & Dreams. “I think part of the players’ identity is to be helping and helping people.”

There have been conversations about what the history of the program has been and now it is time to look forward, “and really think about the future and growing the program and advocating even more for the program,” Walsh said.

Colorado defenceman Devon Toews reflects the kind of player that is going to be important for the growth of NHLPA Goals & Dreams as it forges ahead.

Toews knew he wanted to get involved with helping local military families in the Denver area, but he was not exactly sure how and was admittedly unfamiliar with how NHLPA Goals & Dreams worked.

After he first spoke with staff at the Avalanche and got in touch with the United Heroes League, a nonprofit group that assists military families who have experienced unimaginable hardship or who are facing long-term separation from family members, Toews connected with NHLPA Goals & Dreams.

The NHLPA has a long history with UHL and jumped in with a significant donation of 25 sets of new gear.  A glimmer of an idea blossomed into an unforgettable moment for Toews, the father of three small children, and more than two dozen kids and their families.

“It was like a little snowball and developed into this grand thing,” Toews said.

The kids initially thought they were just getting a tour of the Avalanche’s remodelled locker room.

But as they began moving around the room and looking at the stalls, they realized this was something else altogether.

“One of the kids just shouted out, ‘hey, these are our names,’” Toews said with a chuckle.

Not only were the kids’ names above the stalls, the gear that hung there was brand new and fitted for each youngster. Toews’ nameplate remained above his stall and that too was quickly spotted by one of the kids shortly before he surprised the group of children and their families in the locker room.

“My family, the kids, were all there and they got to experience it,” the veteran defenceman added. “And to see how we were able to put joy on other kids’ faces.”

With the help of all the different partners, “we were able to make this such a big event and something that was so cool and so special,” Toews added. “I never envisioned something this big. It was awesome.”

Moments like that one in Denver in September highlight the constant behind NHLPA Goals & Dreams 25 years after it began – connecting the players with youth at the grassroots level of the game.

Added Walsh, who is closing in on two years on the job as NHLPA Executive Director, “Thinking about the 25th anniversary and beyond is exciting for me.”

Ultimately, it is up to the players, “and what their vision and what they want to see. I think it’s really important for us to give back,” Walsh said.