Gaudreau, a seven-time NHL All-Star who spent two seasons with the Blue Jackets, and his brother, Matthew, died Aug. 29, 2024 when they were struck by an alleged drunk driver, who has been charged with two counts of death by auto.<\/p>\n
Kivlenieks died in a fireworks accident in 2021 at age 24, and Merzlikins spoke at his memorial service.<\/p>\n
In his Instagram post, Bourgeault revealed that Merzlikins chose this theme for his four-year-old son, Knox, who is a huge \u201cSonic the Hedgehog\u201d fan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we got a little something in there for both generations of Merzly\u2019s!!\u201d wrote Bourgeault on his post.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for making Knox\u2019s dream come true!\u201d Merzlikins wrote in his Instagram caption.<\/p>\n
Merzlikins is set to be the Blue Jackets\u2019 starting goalie on Tuesday against the Winnipeg Jets (8 p.m. ET; TSN3, FDSNOH), meaning this sweet mask might get to see some real action very soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gaudreau, a seven-time NHL All-Star who spent two seasons with the Blue Jackets, and his brother, Matthew, died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-300152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}