Brad Marchand put the puck in the back of the net for the Florida Panthers on Saturday night, then pointed a finger in the air and looked to the sky.
The reason was obvious.
This goal was for Selah.
Marchand’s sixth goal of this season and the 430th of his career was unlike none other. It came three days after he was home in Nova Scotia, paying tribute to the life of 10-year-old Selah Panacci-MacCallum, the daughter of his close friend JP MacCallum. Selah died Oct. 24 of adrenal cortical carcinoma, a rare form of cancer.
“The hockey gods always come through,” Marchand told the Panthers’ broadcast after the second period, in an interview aired throughout the arena in Sunrise, Fla. “It was a really, really tough week. That’s a special one to get for Selah.”
So, too, was the next goal: Marchand also had what became the winner in the shootout, with the Panthers topping the Dallas Stars 4-3.
He said he knew all his friends from Nova Scotia were watching. He said he also knew someone was watching from above, too.
“I think it means a lot emotionally for kind of everybody in Selah’s life,” Marchand said. “She loved hockey more than anything and got so much joy out of it, just like we all do, and we play it because we love it and we have a lot of fun doing it. These are memories when you go through tough times, you kind of look back on and see if they bring a little bit of light in the dark moments and put a smile on our faces.”
Marchand missed Florida’s game against Anaheim on Tuesday to be with his friend’s family in Nova Scotia and did so with the Panthers’ blessing. Marchand filled in for JP MacCallum as the coach of the under-18 March and Mill Co. Hunters in Halifax on Wednesday night; Marchand co-owns the team.
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That game Wednesday was a fundraiser for the MacCallum family.
“We fully appreciate the things that are most important and hockey’s very, very important,” Panthers head coach Paul Maurice said earlier Saturday. “But there’s some things that just easily outweigh it and they need to be dealt with. And what he’s going through is real. … There’s things that just trump the game of hockey.”
Marchand spent about 12 hours getting home from Nova Scotia on Friday, dealing with flight delays. He hadn’t worked out in about a week before skating Saturday morning. He wasn’t feeling his best.
And he put on a show anyway.
“You probably could have expected it before the game,” Panthers forward Sam Reinhart said.
Marchand said his bond with JP MacCallum goes back for many years, and that he simply had to make the long trip home to pay tribute to Selah.
“She lived life to the fullest,” Marchand said. “And walking away from the week, I have such a new perspective on life and what it all means and how precious it is and how precious time is. It’s every day. It’s not just a game. It’s not just a sport.
It’s how we live every single day and she lived to the fullest.
“To carry on her memory, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to live every day to the fullest, enjoy it and we’re not going to take it for granted.”
