Golden Knights players visit kids at hospital for holidays

It was in honor of a young female patient, a Golden Knights fan who calls the forward her “boyfriend.” So the least Marchessault could do was be a supportive partner and proudly show off his new accessory.

“She’s awesome. I met her a couple months ago,” Marchessault said. “It was our second date today.”

Many members of the Knights had similar stories after taking about an hour of their time to see young patients, play games and hand out presents. And while kids and members of their hospital staff expressed their gratitude for the visit, the players also appreciated the dose of perspective it gave them.

“You work your entire life to be good at something and to try to help your team. Suddenly, by playing on this team, you become something a little bit more than just a hockey player,” center Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said. “You become somebody that can, for five minutes, walk into a room and make somebody forget about their daily problems, or their daily injuries or daily disease or whatever negatives there are in their life.

“You can turn that into a positive for a whole day and maybe more. They’re going to be like, ‘Remember when the Golden Knights came?’ This is the best part of our work, to be able to use the logo that our organization put on us to affect people’s lives.”

Almost every member of the team took part in the trip, including injured players Erik Haula and Colin Miller. Haula sported a large black brace on his right leg, but still put on a Santa hat and went to the fifth floor to call hockey-themed bingo.

While he did that, the rest of the Knights split up and went room to room to attempt to spread some holiday cheer.

“It’s nice to give back,” forward Ryan Carpenter said. “There’s a lot more important things in this world than playing hockey. Sometimes that can just be our whole world and it can consume us at times. It puts things in perspective. Seeing them smile makes our day, maybe more than them.”

The players took a lot of different approaches to coax those smiles out, including pulling gifts such as Legos, action figures, stuffed animals and more from a cart. A few Knights played board games such as Sorry! with kids, while others did their own thing.

Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury discussed Spider-Man with a patient. Goaltender Malcolm Subban paused in the hallway to take photos. And defenseman Nate Schmidt gave a jersey to his “biggest fan,” even though team mascot Chance tried to run off with it.

“It was awesome. The kids were super happy. To just see the smiles on their faces was pretty cool,” defenseman Brayden McNabb said. “They’re going through a tough time, so for us to be there and make them smile, it means everything.”

Marchessault was the only one to leave the hospital with a gift of his own, a purple wristband he was all too happy to show off.

“They have the best spirit of all of us,” Marchessault said. “They’re always the most positive. It’s a cool event. It’s the best event of the year.”

Contact Ben Gotz at bgotz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BenSGotz on Twitter.