When Grief and Hockey Are Connected Forever

When a hockey team is painful to watch, it’s important to find a deeper reason to keep watching. The Minnesota Wild have been struggling, with a current record of 7-7-4 as I write this. While I’m a perpetual “rose colored glasses” sort of fan, not everyone can manage that. They need a deeper reason to keep positive and support the team. Here’s one of my reasons.

One week ago, the Wild lost one of their biggest and most devoted fans. He wasn’t famous or well-known, but he never missed watching a game and was more passionate about this team than anyone I’ve ever known. His name was Mason, and he was my little brother. Mason passed away unexpectedly after a sudden medical emergency last weekend. 

A few hours before he died, he watched an amazing 5-2 win against the New York Islanders, with that Kirill Kaprizov-Mats Zuccarello back-and-forth goal being the last Wild goal he saw. I think that he died happy, with some hope that the team could turn things around. But even if they couldn’t, he would never stop supporting the Wild. That was his ride-or-die team, come hell or high water.

Mason loved the sport of hockey more than anything. He started skating shortly after learning to walk and never looked back. Hockey was a year-round sport in our household, and as his big sister, I spent countless weekends in hockey rinks around the Midwest supporting him. Hotel room after hotel room, championship games or toilet bowl games at 7 am on a Sunday, it didn’t matter. 

The thing was, we didn’t do all of that because we thought he would ever make it as a professional. He was undersized all the way up until he graduated from high school. He was good, not great, but it didn’t matter. As a family, we were there for the love of the game, and Mason was at the heart of it.

When his playing days were over, that passion shifted into being a fan. Once he could swing it, Mason started buying season tickets. Starting with one of the 11-game packages, he worked his way up to being a full-season ticket member this year. The funny thing was, he didn’t even live in Minnesota. But Mason wanted to be able to go whenever he was back in town and to share the love of hockey with friends and family, even when he couldn’t attend.

Some of my favorite hockey games I’ve ever been to were with my brother. Mason and I went to Alex Goligoski’s 1,000th game celebration, where he scored the OT winner against the Carolina Hurricanes on November 19, 2022. I previously wrote about that game and how amazing it was. I cried like a baby and, honestly, I think Mason teared up too.

We were at the game against the Vancouver Canucks, which ended 10-7 on February 19, 2024. Mason, in some sort of weird premonition of the upcoming game, had purchased two baseball hats at the Hockey Lodge before the game, even though he had come to the game wearing one already. He ended up tossing two of them onto the ice that game. The Wild were scoring so fast in the third period that the announcer couldn’t even announce them fast enough. We laughed and cheered so loud that we both lost our voices. 

Mason also waited in the virtual line to get tickets for our entire family to go to the Winter Classic when the Wild hosted it in 2022. I know people think it’s crazy to watch an outdoor game when the wind chill is close to -50°F, but it was perfect. Mason would go to buy a beer, and by the time he got back to his seat, it would be slush. The Wild lost, but the atmosphere was so fun that I tend to forget that fact. 

As I work on moving forward, drenched in grief, it is hard not to have my No. 1 hockey buddy along for the ride. Our text messages were a constant stream of NHL news, hockey quips and memes, and funny social media posts about our favorite sport. My mom would call and ask me if I’d heard from Mason lately. I’d have to say that, yeah, I talk to him every day, but only about hockey. I have no idea what’s happening in his personal life. 

We both functioned as a sounding board for the other when it came to our favorite sport. Most people I befriend will know hockey on a surface level or a lot about one team specifically, but Mason and I were hockey-crazy. We could share about league minimum guys, AHL teams, or Men’s or World Juniors, knowing that the other person knew exactly who or what they were talking about, no extra explanation needed. 

And now he’s gone. He’ll never again watch the Wild on TV, attend another game in person, or buy another jersey. Mason will not get to see Kaprizov break any and all remaining team records, Zeev Buium grow into the world-class defenseman we all know he can be, or the Swedish goalie tandem dominate the league. When the Wild win the Cup (and Mason and I firmly believe it’s a when and not an if), I will have to celebrate at the parade without him.

But I will also celebrate for him. Even if this season becomes a repeat of the 2023-24 disaster season, I will still watch every game. Because no matter what, Mason would have been watching too. He is my reason for staying a fan, even when it is hard and breaks my heart. 

So if this season is becoming hard or even unbearable for you, please remember my brother Mason and keep cheering for the Wild. Because at some point, I need them to bring the Cup home to the State of Hockey for him. And hug your fellow hockey fans tight. We’re all in this together.

If you’d like to learn more about the extraordinary human being my brother was, I'd love if you read the obituary I wrote for him because we lost a good one, folks.