HOCKEY with the HABS
Veteran Habs goaltender Richard Sevigny provided one-on-one lessons for an eager young goalie during a Saturday afternoon free Habs Hockey School session February 10, at the Hawkesbury arena.
It was a full house at the Hawkesbury arena for a charity hockey game Saturday night to help out the Hawkesbury General Hospital Foundation. That night, everyone there was a Habs fan, ready to cheer on the Montréal Canadiens Alumni.
“It was incredible,” said Pierre-Luc Byham, executive director for the Hawkesbury General Hospital Foundation (HGH). “The atmosphere was absolutely wonderful.”
The Scotiabank Hockey Night in Hawkesbury event, February 10, was the first of several fundraisers scheduled this year for the HGH Foundation. The focus of the fundraising effort for this particular event is the HGH Access 2018 Campaign to raise money for a new CT scanner for the hospital’s diagnostic services department and also buy the hospital its first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device.
The Habs Alumni team has played at a charity function for the HGH Foundation before, back in 2016. This year’s event saw the NHL veterans face their challengers in the HGH Scotiabank squad, with each side managing to score points on each other while the hometown crowd cheered both teams on during the evening.
“They (spectators) were happy to be there,” said Byham. “They were there to cheer on the idols of their youth, and they were there to cheer on the community hockey members playing against their youth idols.”
Habs Hockey School
For about a hundred very young and very eager would-be NHL future stars, the excitement began earlier in the day at the arena.
Habs veterans Gilbert Delorme, Sergio Momesso, and Richard Sevigny, with some help from a couple of the Hawks junior A club, spent an hour that afternoon with dozens of mighty mites, Atoms, and peeweeage hockey players during a special free hockey skills clinic at the Robert Hartley
Sports Complex provided by local business sponsors.
HGH Foundation officials are still reviewing the gate receipts and advance ticket sales and expenses for the February 10 Scotiabank Hockey Night event. But Byham said the evening charity hockey game should have raised at least $24,000 to help with the Access 2018 project.
The HGH Foundation staff will begin planning soon for the joint McHappy Day event, during the first week of May, with local McDonald’s franchises in Hawkesbury and Casselman.
Proceeds from the Hawkesbury McHappy Day drive will help support the HGH children’s rehabilitation service centre, while the Casselman event will assist with funding for mental health services for children and youth in the HGH service region.