In hockey, if a goaltender has good form, the saves follow. It is equally true when it comes to saving a life.
Just ask Rick St. Croix.
One early morning last December, the developmental goaltending coach for the AHL’s Manitoba Moose suffered a heart attack and collapsed at the airport while set to travel with the team on a road trip. It was the “widowmaker”, a 100 per cent blockage of the LAD (left anterior descending) artery. A widowmaker heart attack can stop the heart very fast and that is exactly what happened to St. Croix.
When he was hit in the head by a slapshot in November, 2019, Winnipeg Jets forward Bryan Little required “attention immediately” from the health care teams at St. Boniface Hospital and Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg.
“It was kind of a complicated injury,” says Little, who suffered a perforated ear drum and a brain bleed from the incident, in a game against the New Jersey Devils in the Manitoba capital. “The care from top-to-bottom was unbelievable.”
“(I) went to St. Boniface. They patched up my ear, gave me stitches. And then I went right to HSC.”