It turned out she was right.
“I felt bad at the moment because I’m walking off the bench and she put her phone up to the glass and on the phone it said the mole on the back of your neck is cancer. And it threw me off,” Hamilton recalled on Saturday before the Canucks played their second game of the season in Seattle. “So I kind of just shrugged and kept going. My initial response when I found out was I felt bad because I felt like I didn’t really give her the time of day. I’m excited that she knows because she needs to know.”
The Canucks posted a letter from Hamilton on Saturday retelling the story of how all this played out and expressing his thanks and desire to meet the woman in question. Within barely an hour, both the Canucks and Seattle Kraken said the 22-year-old Popovici had been contacted after spending New Year’s Eve working at a crisis hotline. The pair were able to meet about 90 minutes before the Kraken and Canucks played on Saturday night.
“The fact that I got to look him in the eye and hear what happened from his perspective,” said Popovici, who graduated from the University of Washington and intends to attend medical school in the next year. “Imagine how jarring that is to for you to be at work and someone just kind of looks at you and says, ‘Hey, maybe you go see a doctor.’ That’s not what you want to hear. So the fact that I got to see him and talk to his family members that have been really impacted by him dodging a big bullet that’s so special.”
The Kraken acknowledged the story of what happened midway through the first period to a standing ovation from the crowd and announced both franchises would be giving Popovici a joint gift of $10,000 to help with her medical school expenses.
- TODAY
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