Though they didn't reveal much at first, upon further prodding, I found out that these three, a husband, wife and daughter, had incredible life stories, and hockey was an integral part.
Here is their story.
For the Egdell family, hockey has become a break from life’s complications. A distraction that daughter Allison Egdell needed at last night’s Manitoba Moose game after suffering a seizure yesterday afternoon.
Egdell, 35, has had epilepsy since she was 6 or 7 years old. Because of her condition, she cannot work and requires constant supervision from her family. Last year alone, she had over 160 seizures.
“Today’s wasn’t too bad, so I could still come to the game.” Egdell says. “Sometimes when it’s over, I have to sleep for hours. It makes it worse when it interferes with my plans because I don’t get to do a lot.”
Egdell says she has been lucky enough not to suffer a seizure during a game, but was taken away by ambulance on the way to the arena in November.
“We were walking into the upper concourse (of the MTS Centre) when I had a seizure and fell and cracked my head open,” says Egdell. “We had to miss the game, but when the Moose found out, they gave us tickets for another night.”
Egdell and her father, John “Hoss” Egdell, a former master warrant officer for the Canadian Forces and life-long Maple Leafs fan, have been coming to games since the Moose moved to the MTS Centre in 2004. In 2006, the duo became a trio when Hoss, 67, met his second wife, Linda, also a die-hard hockey fan.
“We met over the Internet,” explains Linda, 59, who says she learned to love hockey while watching the Maple Leafs with her dad on their black-and-white TV set. “We had an immediate connection because we had both lost our spouses to cancer. And there was also our love for hockey. Hoss took me to a Moose game for our first date.”
Seven months later, the two were married. The hockey-themed wedding featured a cake shaped like a hockey rink complete with nets, players, and a large Maple Leafs logo in the centre. In honour of their former spouses and Hoss’s own battle with cancer, in lieu of gifts, donations were made to the Canadian Cancer Society, whose logo all three Egdell’s dawn on the upper-left corner of their Moose jerseys.
Of the 6,027 fans who saw the American Hockey League match-up in which the inconsistent Moose beat the Worcester Sharks 3-1 in the Sharks’ first-ever visit to Winnipeg, Hoss said his family will have appreciated last night’s game in a way others can’t understand.
“It’s something the three of us just get,” says Hoss. “We need hockey in our lives. When you can’t count on life, you can count on hockey.”
What was not mentioned in the article was that Hoss was an excellent hockey player. He played for a multitude of Canadian Force base teams. He was also an avid baseball player.
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