CHICAGO \u2013 Aubrey Meloy and John \u201cJT\u201d Byers got to live out their Make-A-Wish moment on Thursday when the two joined the Chicago Blackhawks at skate prior to their game against the Dallas Stars at United Center (8:30 p.m. ET; Victory+, CHSN, SN1).<\/p>\n
The two got participated in a shootout contest, with Blackhawks players split into two teams. Byers\u2019 team won. As well as meeting the healthy Blackhawks, Meloy and Byers also got to meet forwards Connor Bedard<\/a> and Frank Nazar<\/a>, who are out with upper-body and facial injuries, respectively.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t even feel like I\u2019m really here. I feel like I\u2019m floating,\u201d Meloy said \u201cI\u2019ve watched these guys play hockey on televisions at home and I watch during lunch at school and their highlights and it\u2019s just crazy that I\u2019m really here with them, they know me now and it\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Meloy, 14, from Joliet, Illinois, has long QT syndrome, a serious heart condition and has an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. Her father, Michael, died unexpectedly in 2018 and hockey is her way of staying connected to him.<\/p>\n \u201cHe played hockey growing up and I never really knew that because it was in the 80s. I was not here at all. He really kind of brought hockey down and his dad, my grandpa, loves it,\u201d said Meloy, who\u2019s a competitive figure skater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2013 Aubrey Meloy and John \u201cJT\u201d Byers got to live out their Make-A-Wish moment on Thursday when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-382432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}