Players cherish day with children at charity brunch
Ryan Johansen recently played in his 900th career NHL game, and this is his third organization since debuting 13 years ago with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
He’s been heavily involved in charitable works with the Blue Jackets, the Nashville Predators and now here in his first season with the Colorado Avalanche. Johansen is one of the most popular players in Nashville hockey history, in part because of the time he spent in the community.
This past Sunday, Johansen got to experience the Avalanche’s 25th annual charity brunch for the first time.
“In my opinion from my experiences, that was one of the coolest events I’ve ever done,” Johansen said Tuesday morning before the Avs faced the Dallas Stars in a critical Central Division showdown. “It’s a reminder of what’s important. They were showing the videos of the impact that those days can have on those kids and their families. It was super special and as a group, we all really enjoyed it.”
The Avs’ charity brunch includes a silent auction with baskets of goodies from the players, coaches and hockey operations staff. There is a brunch for the attendees, which is served by the players.
But the main event is the fashion show. Avs players are paired with kids who are referred by three organizations: Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation, Rocky Mountain Children’s Health Foundation and Special Olympics Colorado.
The runway becomes a parade of dancing, choreographed celebrations and expressions of pure joy from a group of kids who have all dealt with medical and physical hardships, some of them since birth.
“It’s great. These kids are super brave,” Avs forward Nathan
Mackinnon said. “They’re warriors. Just super happy and friendly, so it’s great to see their spirits so high. It’s always fun and it was a great group of kids this year.
“We’re just hoping to brighten their days and create some good memories. You stay in touch with some of them over the years and hopefully they have some great memories to look back on.”
With the Stars in town, the Avs will face former Colorado center Matt Duchene on Tuesday night. Duchene’s long-standing relationship with Haven Anderson, a local girl who was battling Stage 4 neuroblastoma when the two met at a Hockey Fights Cancer skate in 2014-15, became the highlight of the Avs charity brunch when they walked to the runway together in 2016.
Duchene, who like Johansen recently played for the Predators, posted a photo with Anderson on Instagram when she attended a game in Nashville in April 2022.
“A lot of those kids are fighting challenges that we are lucky enough that we don’t have to fight,” Bo Byram said. “Just to be able to put a smile on their faces and have some fun with them, it’s well worth our time. It was a blast.”
A couple of the highlights from the runway this past Sunday were a Mackinnon dab playing second fiddle to his runway partner breaking out a full breakdancing routine, Cale Makar losing a game of rock, paper, scissors, and Samuel Girard and Fredrik Olofsson hopping around as frogs for a young princess with a wand as a helpful accessory.
All of the players and kids walked the runway twice, but in between Avalanche captain Gabe Landeskog offered some thoughts on the day in a short speech.
“This is our favorite event, as a team and as an organization,” Landeskog said. “We do a lot of great things in the community, but this is the one that we sort of have circled on the calendar because it means so much to us.
“I think we are all dealing with stuff in our personal lives and our professional lives. I think today just kind of brings us all back to what’s most important, and that’s family, the support we feel from this community here, and health. I think today has been a great day.”