A year full of ups and downs
The Senators fell short in 2017, but the Andersons won the battle that really counts
POSTMEDIA NETWORK
It’s the victory Craig and Nicholle Anderson would choose every time.
Eighteen days after the Ottawa Senators were eliminated from the playoffs in the Eastern Conference final, the club’s top goaltender and his wife Nicholle spoke to Postmedia Monday afternoon from their offseason home in Coral Springs, Fla., less than 24 hours after the 2016-17 NHL season officially came to an end with the Pittsburgh Penguins hoisting the Stanley Cup for the second straight spring.
While the Senators’ 3-2 loss in double- OT to the Penguins in Game 7 on May 25 at the PPG Paints Arena still stings in these parts, Anderson was able to put it all in perspective in wide-ranging interview as he spends time with Nicholle, and the couple’s two children Jake and Levi.
It was a season that had no shortage of challenges for the Senators but none of those were anything like what the Anderson family had to go through.
The season started off like any other but then things took a turn for the worst in late October. That’s when Nicholle Anderson was diagnosed with a rare form of throat cancer. Over the next seven months, she underwent and endured extensive treatments and on the morning of Game 7, she was able to deliver the best news ever to her husband. Her doctors had declared her “cancerfree.”
So, how does Craig Anderson look back on this season?
“Like a double-edge sword,” Anderson said Monday. “It was successfulinonewaybutwewereunsuccessful in our goal in that there’s only one team that can win but we were so close to getting there. I feel — more so than I’ve ever felt before — the belief that you can achieve what you want to achieve.
“I feel kind of, not empty, but unsatisfied in the (hockey) direction, but at the same time on the other side of the story we’re grateful for everything we have. We successfully battled through what we had to battle through and we got to the finish line on the one side of it but we didn’t get to the finish line on the other.”
No, second opportunities don’t come along often in life, but the 36-year-old Anderson will be back with the Senators in training camp in September with the hopes of winning a Stanley Cup. He and Nicholle will take the victory got off the ice any day of the week.
“I feel like there’s unfinished business but I’d rather have it be unfinished business on the selfish side,” he said. “On my families side, I’m glad we’re finished with the cancer battle. If we had two goals: The goal of winning the Stanley Cup and the goal of beating cancer, we achieved one but not the other.
“There will always be a chance to get to the Stanley Cup as long as I keep playing but if she didn’t beat cancer there would no longer be ...”
His voice trailed off and there was no need to complete the sentence.
Nicholle Anderson thought she had a sinus infection when she went to Dr. Tim Cregan, who works with the Senators, to get checked out in late-October when the club was on the road.
She had promised her friend Crystal, who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer in Lehigh Valley, Pa., she’d sit with her during her treatments. At the same time Nicholle had been struggling with congestion that wouldn’t go away. She thought it was the result of travelling on airplanes. She also had found a lump in her neck and wanted to that checked out by a doctor.
“I had told my friend it was nothing. I got in the car and went to Pennsylvania to sit through treatments with my girlfriend Crystal and that’s when (the Ottawa doctors) told me they wanted me to have biopsy immediately,” Nicholle recalled.
Working with the Philadelphia Flyers, the Senators were able to get Nicholle into see a doctor in Allentown, Pa., to have the biopsy done. Before training camp in September, she travelled to Ottawa from Florida to attend a team event with several other Ottawa players and their partners at Mont Tremblant.
“I got off the airplane and I’m thinking my ear’s not popping from the airplane, and it just snowballed into something that we didn’t even think about,” Nicholle said. “That morning I got a biopsy and then I went and sat with my girlfriend.”
The news Nicholle had Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma came as a complete shock.
Whenshegotthediagnosisthatshe was in for a difficult fight, Anderson was in Vancouver with the Senators on an off-day and he prepared to go home immediately. He took a call from captain Erik Karlsson and alternate captain Dion Phaneuf, who both told him to get home and take as much time as he needed.
Though Anderson wasn’t supposed to return between the pipes anytime soon, but there he was, only five days later, suiting up after the Senators lost back-up goalie Andrew Hammond to a groin injury on Oct. 28 in Calgary. Nicholle was watching the game with Craig in Allentown, and told him she wanted him to get back to work.
“We were sitting in my mom’s living room watching the game. Honestly, we knew the diagnosis but we didn’t have a game plan on what doctor were going to yet or any kind of treatment plan,” Nicholle said.
“When I was watching, I see Hammond hurt and I said, ‘Craig your team needs you’ and he looked at me probably with like 600 eyes. I said, ‘You need to go back right this second. You can’t leave them without a goalie. They’re counting on you.’ I told him ‘to play as long as you can until we have a game plan.’
“Since my parents live an hour from New York it was easy for my parents and my sisters to go back and forth with me until we had a game plan. I couldn’t leave them without a goalie, either. I was like ‘You have to go back.’ ”
Craig rejoined the Senators in Edmonton on Oct. 29. Karlsson and winger Clarke MacArthur were there to meet him at the airport when his flight landed. The next night, Anderson had a performance not many will forget with a 37-save effort in a 2-0 victory over the Oilers at Rexall Place.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house in Edmonton and there were tears in the living room in Allentown as well.
“I was crying,” Nicholle said. “I couldn’t believe it. You could tell he was focused and he wanted it.”
She said, at the time, she hadn’t really thought of the challenge ahead.
Nicholle considers herself fortunate she didn’t have to go through this fight alone.
She went to the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City in late-November for intensive radiation and the side effects were difficult.
“The first two weeks I thought ‘I can handle it Craig, I can be by myself, and it’s not supposed to kick in right away,’ ” Nicholle said. “The first treatment, I was in the hospital that night sick and it was so bad that I was glad to have my family together and to know that he was there for me, I’m glad he was.
“He was the one who said, ‘I’m coming back and I have to be there Nicholle.’ I told him I could handle it but I think he knew then I was in shock and I didn’t really know what I was expecting.”
Craig Anderson was getting on the team bus in Pittsburgh after the morning skate in Pittsburgh on the day of Game 7 of the Eastern final when he got the news from Nicholle the doctors had declared her cancer was in remission.
She didn’t want to tell him because she wanted him to focus on the challenge on the ice but she wanted to tell him too.
“I was very numb for three days. I felt like I couldn’t talk to anybody because I didn’t know if I should believe it or not,” said Nicholle. “I was very overwhelmed.
“I didn’t want to tell him because I looked at it like, ‘Okay, this is Game 7 so if I have cancer, still, it’s going to screw up his game mentally and if I don’t it might screw up his game mentally because he’ll be too happy and emotional.
“I was like, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t even tell you.’ I told him but I told him not to tell anybody.”
Anderson wasn’t sure how to react when he got the news.
“I was on the bus after the morning skate and it was one of those moments where you didn’t know whether to cry, jump up and scream. It’s one of those things where it was just a sigh of relief. That’s great news but now we’ve got to go eat lunch. I had to get back to the routine. We were in such a routine,” Anderson said with a laugh.
“It was almost like it didn’t really sink until later. We were in the moment and focusing on the game. You wanted to hug her but you weren’t there to hug her so I said, ‘I guess we’ll continue this conversation when I see you.’ ”