Twenty minutes later, Schaefer skated onto the same rink that the heroes of his youth had played on. He paused to look up at the stands, taking it all in as part of the special moment it truly was.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo finally step onto that ice, that was awesome,\u201d he said after the morning skate.<\/p>\n
Schaefer\u2019s comments came in front of a scrum of 20-plus reporters and several TV cameras. He handled it with the same poise with which he plays.<\/p>\n
When asked about the prediction he\u2019d made on Monday that an entourage of about 1,000 would be on hand for the game, he broke into a wry grin.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe I was pushing it a bit,\u201d he said with a chuckle. \u201cBut there\u2019s going to be a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
There certainly were, which he found out firsthand during warmups.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was awesome, seeing so many friends and family in the stands and getting out there,\u201d Schaefer said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty cool. It brings back memories of coming here as a kid with friends and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the first familiar faces he spotted was Brady Scriven, who is the brother of Matthew\u2019s best friend, Ryan. Brady is a goalie for the Brantford 99ers U12 AAA minor hockey team that Schaefer served as an honorary coach for during the Olympic break.<\/p>\n
\u201cI threw a puck up to Brady when I saw him, and everyone came up and tackled him because they\u2019re all trying to get the puck,” Schaefer said. “So, I think there was a little scrum there for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brady had plenty of company when it came to the masses cheering for Schaefer. His dad, Todd, and older brother, Johnny, watched from a private box. His wheelchair-bound grandmother, Marianne, was in the building watching her grandson play an NHL game for the first time live.<\/p>\n
Schaefer even said a handful of his school teachers from the past were on hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty minutes later, Schaefer skated onto the same rink that the heroes of his youth had played on.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-547745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}