Hockey Players And Teddy Bears

I play hockey on Monday nights with a good friend of mine called Jon Ripley. Rips is Canadian, but I try not to hold that against him. After a game in October, we were in the parking lot, drinking a beer, and talking about our club's monthly deal with our local minor league team, the Denver Cutthroats. We sell tickets for ten bucks, and our charity gets to keep two. We usually sell a few hundred seats, so we all get a monthly fun night out of pro hockey, while Dawg Nation earns some money. The Cutthroats love us- we've bought around a thousand tickets this season, which is a pretty big deal since they're just getting started.

On those nights, Dawg Nation normally gives a check to a deserving hockey player that's been sick or injured, because that's the whole idea behind our foundation. But last year, I had been in Rapid City, South Dakota, and they held a Teddy Bear Toss, where people bring stuffed animals to the game, and then throw them out on the ice after the first goal. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen.

So Rips and I look at each other and say, "Why don't we try to do that for our game in December? Do you think the Cutthroats would go for it?" Rips found the Rapid City clip on Youtube, and we went over and showed it to Cappy, who runs the charity. He loved the idea, and called The Fish the next day. They got on board right away, so we had ourselves a Teddy Bear Toss, if we could get it together.

Rapid City has been doing this for around five years, so now it's a tradition, and they throw a crapload of animals out on the ice. But we were afraid that for at least this first year, about 20 people would throw one out, and it would look lame. We needed to stack the deck a bit, and buy some stuffed animals to make sure enough got out there. But we'd need some money for that.

So three generous Dawgs ponied up $1400 total from either their companies or their pocket, and we were able to buy 300 stuffed animals wholesale from another of our players that is in that business. We decided to try and sell them before the game to people that didn't have an animal with them, and maybe make a few extra bucks for whatever charity we picked to receive the animals.

The charity turned out to be easy. A board member from the Denver Santa Claus Shop happened to be the wife of one of our players, Jack Kelly, who had passed away a couple of years ago. In fact, Jack was the main inspiration for starting the Dawg Nation Hockey Foundation, so this was perfect.

Honestly, as the game day approached, we were scared shitless. There were so many variables. Would anybody come to the game on a Saturday night in December, or would they be going to Christmas parties? Would anyone buy our animals, or would we have to find a way to get them thrown out on the ice? What if the Fish didn't score? How would we get them cleaned up without delaying the game for a long spell?

Before the game, I set a few personal goals (imagine Morgan Freeman's voice for this part). I hoped that a hundred people would buy a stuffed animal from us, and we'd have $500 to give to the Santa Claus Shop. I hoped that we'd have another 200 animals out there, making a total of 500 when we got ours on the ice. I hoped that we could get them cleaned up quickly, without getting the old stink eye from the hockey players.

I hoped...

Well, to my surprise and delight, and because of a big effort by a charming and good looking sales staff, we sold every damn one of our stuffed animals. When we got rid of the last one, we jumped around and high fived each other like we won the friggin' Stanley Cup. The kids would be getting $1500 in cash, but how many stuffed animals would we be taking over there?

The answer came at 1:15 of the second period. Troy Schwab scored for the Cutthroats on a rebound, and then this happened:



It started raining stuffed animals. I was among the gang of Cutthroats staff and Dawg Nation hockey players down on the ice (#35 in red, trying not to fall on my ass), and they just kept coming, and coming, and coming.

It was brilliant.

We gathered them all up fairly quickly, and took them underneath the stands to bag 'em up. As we were doing it, we took an approximate count. Drum roll, please...

1250

That number shattered every expectation we had. Rips and I looked at each other, allowed ourselves a few happy expletives, and then set out to see if we had enough vehicles to get them all home. Kids, that's a fun problem to have.


That's me on the left, and then Rips, Cappy, and Rich. The animals weren't that big- we're all just that short 

Monday afternoon, we got the privilege of loading 25 trash bags full of stuffed animals into my minivan, which was so gut-full, my wife Annie had to ride with a big dog in her lap, and head on down to the Denver Santa Claus Shop. We worried about whether we would be overwhelming them with so many- would it be too much for them to handle?

Uh...no. When we got there, there must have been 700-800 people in line waiting for toys. Our dogs, and bears, and big bananas, and lots of other different things would find a home. Kathy Kelly and the staff were waiting for us, and made us feel great while we unloaded the van. I'm sure they've gotten bigger contributions, but they made us feel like we were the biggest ever.


This wasn't all of it- there were another 10 or so bags

So because of the generosity of our sponsors, and the hard work of a very dedicated small group of people, we pulled this thing off. What started as an idea from two hockey players with a combined IQ of around 29 (he's Canadian and I'm a goalie- how smart can we be?), turned into something that we'll be proud of forever.

And wait 'til next year...