Sleigh Day: Star NHL Alumni And Paralympians Play Sledge Hockey For Great Cause

Yahoo

24-05-2025

By Ronnie Shuker, Features Writer
I wait patiently for my turn as an event staffer works hard to get everyone onto the ice. On my left is Darcy Tucker, whose thick, black, horn-rimmed glasses hide the wild, fiery eyes from his playing days. To my right is Wendel Clark, who still exudes that teddy-bear demeanor behind his stocky frame, shaved head and handlebar mustache. At six-foot and 160 pounds, I'm slightly taller and significantly slimmer than both Toronto Maple Leafs alumni. And with 545 fewer NHL goals, I'm light years less skilled. But the playing field is about to be levelled. We're about to play some sledge hockey.
'Are you ready?' the staffer asks.
'Ready as I'm ever gonna be,' I reply.
'Have you done this before?'
'Never.'
' 'Darc,' have you?' the staffer asks Tucker.
'Once.'
'How was it?' I ask him.
'Oh, it's way harder than it looks.'
It's just a skills session to start the day. But save for a couple of ringers, skill is in short supply here at Scotiabank Pond in Toronto for the Come to Sleigh event put on by the Shine Foundation. The three of us slip onto our blades, strap in and join about a dozen others on the ice. Among them are Geraldine Heaney, an Olympic champion with the Canadian women's national team, and three-time Stanley Cup champion Mike Krushelnyski, who at one point goes ass-over-tea-kettle with his heels in the air and the rest of him splayed out on the ice. He sucks at this, too.
I dig into the ice and slowly pick up a modicum of speed as I glide around. As I approach Clark, it suddenly dawns on me that I don't know how to stop. Luckily, we're not wearing skates, or I would've ended up like Bruce Bell of the St. Louis Blues (YouTube it, kids).
'Have you done this before?' I ask Clark.
'I have. But not enough to be able to do it well.'
A spokesperson for the Shine Foundation grabs a mic and calls us to center ice. With her are the two lone ringers among the group: Kevin Rempel and Chadd Stoppa. The two of them put us through some stickhandling and shooting drills and then teaches us how to stride and turn, as well as how to right ourselves after we inevitably fall over. We then disperse to try our hand at our newfound skills.
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I watch as Tucker stickhandles a puck while Clark stabs his disk with the end of his stick. In my only successful maneuver of the session, I manage to make a tape-to-tape pass to Krushelnyski. I'm just starting to get the hang of it when I glide over to Kevin, a former five-year veteran of Canada's men's national sledge hockey team, in search of some tips to alleviate some discomfort.
'Figured it out?' Kevin says.
'Sort of. It's like playing a totally different sport. I really feel it in my hips and into the groin area. Is that normal? There's a lot of core involved in this.'
Kevin laughs hard. He advises me to lean forward and tighten my core to lower my center of gravity.
'Your hamstrings are probably gonna be the tiredest at the end of the day,' he says. 'Nobody's used to having their legs straight and leaning forward so much. You don't stretch your legs that much usually. But if you're getting a little numb, just take five minutes, unstrap yourself, pop your legs out to the side, stand up, let the blood flow back, and you're good to go.
'If your testicles go numb, let me know.'
It isn't until later that I learn about Kevin's backstory. On Canada Day in 2006, Kevin achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a motocross professional. Two weeks later, he crashed during a freestyle jump, breaking his back, pelvis and ribs, leaving him with incomplete paraplegia. Luckily, he didn't sever his spinal cord. Still, doctors told him he would never walk again.
"If your testicles go numb, let me know."
- Kevin Rempel
Kevin defied their prognosis and, after a year of surgery and therapy, taught himself how to walk again. Three years after that, he was representing Canada, winning gold at the 2013 World Para Championship and then bronze at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, where he tied for second in scoring with six assists in five games.
The skills session ends, and we all disperse for lunch. In the lobby, I take a seat at a table with the event's other ringer, Chadd Stoppa, who's joined by his parents, Adam and Anita, and his younger brother, Eli.
There will come a time when stories like Chadd's won't need to be told, when he's regarded as a hockey player like any other, and when the game finally becomes a basic human right for any Canadian kid who wants to play the sport.
Until then, it's up to former players like Clark, Tucker, Heaney and Krushelnyski, as well as broadcasters like Sportsnet's Evanka Osmak, who's the best of the celebrity bunch on this day, to lend their name, time and pride to events like Come to Sleigh to raise money so that kids like Chadd and other Shine Dreamers can have a lifelong wish fulfilled.
Chadd's father has a saying: 'It doesn't matter what you're given; it's what you make from it.' Living with hydrocephalus, spina bifida and Type 1 diabetes, Chadd has exemplified that ethos. At 17 and on the cusp of achieving his own lifelong dream, he has already made more out of life than most people ever do.
"Oh, it's way harder than it looks."
- Darcy Tucker
Chadd's first dream came true when the Shine Foundation granted his wish to meet his heroes, the Canadian Paralympic national team, at the 2018 Para Hockey Cup in London, Ont. For Chadd, who was just 11 at the time, it was like being embedded with his favorite NHL team. He stayed at the same hotel, had dinner with the players, played video games with them, attended their practices and games and was even the team's flag-bearer for the tournament. Six years later, and with Chadd now part of Team Canada's development team, it's only a matter of time before he is where his idols were and makes his own, second, dream come to fruition. 'My goal is to wear the maple leaf,' he says without hesitation.
When he gets there – and he will – it'll be the result of years of hard work, many miles on the road and years of love and sacrifice by his parents, just as it is for any non-disabled player.
Chadd was introduced to sleds in kindergarten through one of his physiotherapists. His family lives in Barry's Bay, situated in eastern Ontario, about a two-and-half-hour drive from Ottawa, where the closest sledge hockey team was when Chadd first started out in the sport. He played there until he was 10 and then at home in Barry's Bay until he was 13. Since then, he's been playing in the eight-team Ontario Sledge Hockey Association for the Elmvale Bears, near Barrie, Ont., about a three-hour drive from Barry's Bay. 'That's our closest option for him to be able to play,' Anita says.
During the season, the family makes the trip every weekend or every second weekend. The team is understanding of the long drive, so Chadd isn't required to attend every practice. To keep him sharp, Adam and Anita rent ice back in Barry's Bay a couple of times a month at $125 an hour. Adam goes on the ice in his skates and works with Chadd 1-on-1. They also make use of the outdoor rinks in town and a pond on the fourth-generation family farm, where they raise beef cattle. Eli, who plans to be the Stoppas' fifth-generation farmer, also plays hockey, so Adam and Anita often head in opposite directions for games.
On top of his regular OSHA games, Chadd also plays for Team Ontario. Adam is his coach, with Olympians Greg Westlake and Adam Dixon as assistants behind the bench. Between Chadd's two teams, you can imagine the driving required. But for the family, life on the road is inseparable from Chadd's life on the ice. It is simply part of the game. 'We've been in the situation where we drove from Barry's Bay to Windsor for a playoff game,' Adam said. 'Then turned around and came home.'
'So 16 hours of driving plus a game in one day?' I ask. 'That's commitment.'
'Yeah, it's a lot of Red Bull.'
I thank Chadd and let him go get ready for the tournament. A diehard Maple Leafs fan, he'll be playing against both Clark and Tucker when the tournament begins.
'Have you talked to Wendel or Darcy?' I ask before he leaves.
'We were talkin' a little bit, yep,' Chadd says.
'Don't give Wendel your strategy,' Adam tells him. 'He's not on your team.'
Adam then pauses and smiles.
'I'll give you twenty bucks to rock him.'
Among the handful of people taking in the games is 28-year-old Georgia Beauchemin, who was out on the ice with the rest of us for the skills session. Named after the country of her birth in Eastern Europe, Georgia was adopted by her Canadian parents at five weeks old. It wasn't until she turned six months old that her parents began noticing something was off. It would take another year until she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. 'I'm pretty high functioning,' Georgia says. 'So it didn't really matter to have a diagnosis.'
Georgia and I sit opposite each other in the lobby while organizers prep the ice for the games. She has on a black T-shirt with 'Chicks with Picks' written on the front in pink lettering. When the family moved to Hamilton, Ont., after 13 years in Montreal and three in Abu Dhabi, Georgia picked up sledge hockey as a way to get some exercise.
'A recreation therapist that I was working with back then showed me this list of sports that I could do,' Georgia says. 'On it was sledge hockey, and I did that.'
Georgia has also been a competitive swimmer and horseback rider, and she continues to get on the ice whenever she can, including today during the skills session. Enrolled at Toronto Metropolitan University in the disability studies program with a minor in politics, she admits to being a bit of a political junkie and a policy wonk. Her goal is to work in disability policy.
After talking with Georgia, I go out to the rink and find a spot behind the glass to take in the games. The ice has been split in two. On one side, Team Clark is taking on Team Tucker/Osmak. Instead of his old No. 17, Clark is wearing No. 77 with a black toque pulled over his helmet. Tucker is wearing No. 34 with his old Leafs helmet and his familiar No. 16 on it. At one point, the two former teammates collide and embrace while play carries on. One net gets filled more than the other, until the score resembles a football game.
'Team Tucker/Osmak up by a touchdown,' the announcer says. 'Team Clark is slow out of the gates.'
The game is like watching Timbits hockey compared to the battle going on over on the other side. With Kevin repping Team Rempel and Chadd leading the way for Team Heaney/Krushelnyski, Kevin and Chadd are going goal-for-goal around the human pylons who double as their teammates. Then, with the score 5-5 and less than a minute remaining, Kevin pots a dramatic goal for the win. Team Rempel goes on to wipe the floor with Team Tucker/Osmak in the championship game.
"It doesn't matter what you're given; it's what you make from it."
- Adam Stoppa
I leave and head outside for the parking lot. With a sore core and a healthy helping of humble pie, I walk to my car with a new perspective and a renewed appreciation for the game. Kevin, Chadd, Georgia and everyone else who gets butt-down on their blades, they aren't sledge hockey players. They're just hockey players.
This article appeared in our 2025 Top-100 NHLers issue. This issue focuses on the 100 best players currently in the NHL, with the Avalanche's Nathan MacKinnon sitting atop the list. We also include features on Alex Ovechkin finally beating Wayne Gretzky's goal-scoring record, and former CFL running back Andrew Harris' switch to semi-professional hockey. In addition, we provide a PWHL playoff preview as the regular season nears its end.
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