“This is amazing for PAWS to have a member of the Kraken come out and take an interest in our work and help us raise awareness about what we’re doing,” she said. “For our staff, it’s really validating. We can sometimes feel like we’re operating alone out here on our campus, so to know there’s broader interest and support for what we’re doing, I think it really just lifts everybody’s spirits up and gives us that motivation.”
For McCann, having Cheddar as a four-legged companion helped him through some tough times in recent seasons as he battled a series of lower body ailments that cut into his production numbers. He and his wife acquired the Corgi in 2019 right before the COVID-19 pandemic and not long after he’d been traded by Florida to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The couple were fans of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine sitcom where a no-nonsense police precinct commander, Raymond Holt, had a female Pembroke Welsh Corgi named Cheddar.
“So, we always told ourselves that if we ever got a dog, we’d get a Corgi and we’d name him ‘Cheddar’,” McCann said.
When the pandemic struck shortly, the three of them spent plenty of time together in their place alone. Corgis have a reputation for stubbornness, and McCann said there’ve definitely been some moments, but overall, it’s something he’d never trade.
“My dog just takes my mind away from everything,” McCann said. “I just focus on him and he does on me. It’s a love-love situation, him and I. He’s been so much more than a dog for me. He’s my mental escape from a lot of things.”
And his wife’s escape as well, especially when McCann is on the road with the team.
She’d also been from a dog-loving family, that had a Bernese Mountain Dog and a Husky German Shepherd, named Buddy and Hank, who’d interacted with the much smaller Cheddar.
“They corrected him and they taught him well,” she said of the two dogs, who’ve both since passed. “But because of that, I think he’s got a lot of confidence in most dogs these days. Because they were so much bigger than him.”
Cheddar has also gained plenty of confidence in front of a camera. It was while her husband was still with the Penguins that Val began putting photos of Cheddar on social media.
Matt Murray, who spent last season with the Kraken, had been Pittsburgh’s netminder and had two massive Newfoundland dogs named Beckham and Leo. Murray and his wife, Christina began putting the dogs on Instagram, and they gained a massive following.
Val soon began putting photos of Cheddar on his own Instagram account and it took off as well.