Santini has put on his coaching skates as well, teaching Chase and his teammates how to play the game while developing fundamental hockey skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s just a great joy seeing the smile on their faces, seeing them get better and enjoy the process of getting better,\u201d Santini said. \u201cIt’s a great joy, and I\u2019m looking forward to doing it the next few years as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coachella Valley Firebirds (AHL) forward John Hayden is Chase\u2019s second favorite player. Santini and Hayden were teammates for the U.S. National Team Development Program (NTDP)\u2014and the duo fought once in an NHL game. Santini\u2019s kids refer to Hayden as \u2018Uncle John\u2019, and Hayden is Chelsea\u2019s godfather.<\/p>\n
Hockey has played a central part in the Santini family. Chelsea enjoys dancing to the music during warmups and the intermissions in Syracuse, and she\u2019s next on the list to hopefully see Santini play in the NHL.<\/p>\n
Not even a Lightning loss on Tuesday could ruin a memorable night for the family.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re seeing hockey playing for real and trying to score points more often,\u201d Chase said of his first NHL game.<\/p>\n
His father enjoyed it too, not hiding his wide smile as his son ran near his feet in the hallway and greeted Santini\u2019s NHL friends near the Lightning locker room on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s been around for six or seven seasons now, and as he gets older he’s moved to, I think, eight places we counted the other day,\u201d Santini said of Chase. \u201cHe knows the routine. He’s watched a lot of hockey, and he’s a really good kid. I’m really proud of him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Santini has put on his coaching skates as well, teaching Chase and his teammates how to play the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-190955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}