Charlie Goergen, a cancer survivor and hockey player from Robbinsdale Armstrong/Cooper’s varsity boys team, was selected for the traditional “Let’s Plan Hockey!” announcement prior to the Wild game. The Hockey Fights Cancer Awareness Night is a joint initiative of the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association powered by the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

Even though he only had a couple of lines to remember for the call, Goergen said it was nerve-wracking but also fun.

“I was super excited and super honored,” Goergen said. “Because saying ‘Let’s Play Hockey,’ I think it’s a big deal. I think it’s very fun.”

Goergen was one of three cancer survivors the Wild featured throughout the evening. Fourteen-year-old Aspen Heisler, a sled hockey player, brought the Wild flag to center ice before player introductions as the game’s honorary flag bearer. Another sled hockey player, and recipient of the 2023 USA Hockey Disabled Athlete of the Year award, Alex Gullingsrud, was featured on the videoboard during the first intermission.

Lavender is part of the theme for the annual Hockey Fights Cancer Awareness Night at Xcel Energy Center in a game between the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild. (MHM Photo / Heather Rule)

Back in January, Goergen found a lump on his neck and went to a couple of doctors to get it checked out. Eventually, he went to a cancer research facility and was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

This was about halfway through his junior hockey season with Armstrong /Cooper.

“So, I was going through chemo(therapy) as I was playing hockey still,” Goergen said. “And luckily, I only missed a few games and some practices. It didn’t take that much of a dent out of my season.”

Chemo every other Friday kept him out for four or five days afterward where he “couldn’t really do anything” and just stayed home with “really low” energy levels.

Looking at his stats, you wouldn’t know Goergen had anything altering his season, even if he wasn’t 100% on the ice. He finished third on his team in points (35) and second in assists (21). He said he was just glad to be able to finish out the season.

Goergen obviously had the support of his family during his cancer battle last winter. He also had his hockey community behind him. Not just his Armstrong /Cooper teammates but the whole organization starting at the youth levels.

“They got No. 10 stickers on their helmets because that’s my number,” Goergen said. “It was really cool to see the support that I was surrounded with throughout that time.”

Knowing that he had so many people supporting him helped; he wasn’t just playing for him but for all of his supporters who wanted to see him succeed, Goergen said.

“It was obviously a really hard time,” Goergen said. “But I battled through it with the support of my teammates, coaches, family and everything.”

By April, his body had beaten the cancer. He received the good news in May and has been in remission ever since. He recently had his six-month check-up scan and will meet with doctors soon to go over the results.

In the meantime, Goergen is preparing for his senior hockey season with Armstrong /Cooper. Captain’s practices started in October and finished up just before the Hockey Fights Cancer night, with team tryouts this week. Only a couple of days before Goergen said “Let’s Play Hockey!” at Xcel Energy Center, he was named one of Armstrong /Cooper’s captains this season.

Goergen has played hockey his whole life, starting after he’d watched his two older brothers play. Naturally, he’s a Wild fan, too. He knew about the NHL’s Hockey Fights Cancer initiative before, but he didn’t know many people affected by cancer.

“So, it was never a main focal point of my life… I never understood it fully,” said Goergen, who watched Sunday’s Wild game from a suite with his parents and six older siblings, and a couple of their significant others. “But once I got diagnosed, I realized this is a really important night for a lot of people.

“I think it’s just a great thing that they’re doing.”

He said he wants to have as much fun as possible during his senior season of hockey and see how far his team can go, hopefully improving along the way. They finished 10-14-2 last season, losing in the section quarterfinals to powerhouse Edina. After high school, Goergen would love to play junior hockey, hoping to reach the North American Hockey League.

Like every high school hockey player, he’d also love to be on the ice at the X in a few months. To play in the state tournament.

“If you get to the X, you know you’ve succeeded,” Goergen said.

He’s already succeeded in fighting cancer.

The post Hockey Fights Cancer appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

His flag bearing mission accomplished, a gleeful Riley makes his way back to his proud parents. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

SAINT PAUL — Less than an hour prior to the Minnesota Wild’s Nov. 2 home game against the Ottawa Senators, 8-year-old Riley Kane was asked to reveal his favorite Wild player.

“Kaprizov,” Kane said of Wild forward Kirill Kaprizov, through his endearing grin. “He scores a lot of goals.”

At that moment, however, the Wild’s $45-million-man had not done so through eight games of the 2021-22 season. When Kaprizov buried his first regular-season goal since May 7 in overtime to lift the Wild to a 5-4 win over the Sens, perhaps no one, including Kaprizov himself, was happier than Kane watching from his seat in Suite 24 at Xcel Energy Center.

It was a fitting way to cap off the Wild’s annual Hockey Fights Cancer Awareness Night, an evening which saw Wild players warm up in lavender jerseys, the color representing all forms of cancer, and fans holding up signs honoring loved ones lost to the devastating disease. The children of Tom Kurvers, the late Wild assistant general manager who passed away from lung cancer June 21, 2021, led the ‘Let’s Play Hockey’ chant prior to puck drop.

Although Kapriov’s goal may have been a fortunate coincidence that night, Kane’s presence, unfortunately, was not. Kane, who has been fighting his own battle against cancer, was selected by the Wild to be the game’s honorary flag bearer, a youth hockey player charged with planting the team’s flag at center ice as the game’s combatants step onto the rink before each Minnesota home game.

At Riley’s routine annual exam in December of 2020, his doctor noticed a lump on one of his testicles. The doctor thought it was a hernia and referred the Kanes to a specialist. Pandemic-related scheduling issues pushed that appointment back into February and, upon examination, the specialist immediately referred them to Minneapolis Children’s Hospital. Two days later, Riley underwent surgery to remove a tumor from the affected testicle and, on Feb. 17, the biopsy results came back confirming the Kane family’s worst fear: The tumor was cancerous.

“It was pretty heart wrenching,” said Riley’s father Jeff, who lost his father to lung cancer two years ago. “At that point we’d kind of expected it. Not to say it wasn’t still a shock, but it feels like your stomach just drops out and it’s tough.”

“You feel helpless because you can’t fix it,” added Riley’s mom, Tera. “You can bring him to his appointments and you can connect him with all the right people, but you can’t fix him. You have to hope that the doctors and the nurses and everybody else is able to.”

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