At 6 feet 6 and 251 pounds, Rampage defenseman Nolan Yonkman has always been an intimidating force on the ice.

Throughout his career, Yonkman has been known for his crunching hits on the opposition — for being a tough guy.

Then he met 9-year-old Yadira Medrano.

“That little girl ...,” Yonkman said. “She definitely softened me up.”

And stole his heart.

The two were introduced at a team-sponsored Face-Off Against Kids Cancer event in January at a local pizza restaurant and hit it off immediately.

By then, Medrano had already endured a year of treatment for osteosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer.

She had lost a leg, her hair and parts of both lungs to the disease, but not her smile or infectious spirit.

In one afternoon, Yonkman's tough-guy image began to melt away.

The pair kept in touch in the ensuing weeks and Medrano came to Rampage games with her family.

Just to see her hero.

When the little girl died last month, the news shook Yonkman to the tips of his skates.

“It was a surreal feeling, knowing we weren't going to be doing this anymore,” he said.

Tonight, Yonkman and the Rampage plan to honor Medrano with a helmet decal bearing her initials. All the players will wear it for the remainder of the season.

The decal will be unveiled as part of the team's Face-Off Against Kids Cancer Night festivities when the Rampage take on the Toronto Marlies at the AT&T Center.

The cancer program was started in 2003 by the Mississippi Sea Wolves hockey club and duplicated in Atlantic City, N.J., and Phoenix.

Rampage radio voice Dan Weiss was responsible for the latter two. When he joined the Rampage in 2009, it was one of the first causes he championed.

The initiative pairs Rampage players with children in remission or in the early stages of treatment at the Centers for Oncology and Blood Disorders at Christus Santa Rosa Children's Hospital.

“One of the things I find unique about hockey players is they're very humble and very caring,” Weiss said. “When they take up a cause, they really get behind it.”

No one got behind it more than Yonkman, a 30-year-old bachelor and native of Punnichy, Saskatchewan. He had participated in charitable causes in other cities where he'd played, such as visiting children's hospitals. Nothing, however, prepared him for this.

He was taken with Yadira from the very beginning, and vice versa.

“She had a big crush on him,” said Juan Medrano, Yadira's father. “He would encourage her when she didn't want to take her treatments. He always went out of his way to do what he could for her.”

The father described his daughter as smart and very athletic before she was diagnosed in December 2009. She could outrun both of her older brothers, Jordan and J.J., and was practicing to be a cheerleader, he said.

But what impressed everyone most, he added, was her strength and maturity.

“I would tell her I wished it was me that had the cancer and not her,” Juan Medrano recalled, tears rolling down his face. “She would start to cry and say, ‘No, Daddy, not you.' She preferred to be sick and not me.”

Yonkman had seen this strength firsthand. He recalls visiting Yadira in the hospital and seeing her “always trying to cheer up” the other cancer patients.

“Her nature rubbed off on everybody,” Yonkman said.

After the season, Yonkman went back to Canada. But the friendship was maintained via text messages.

The Medranos moved to Houston over the summer to begin experimental treatments at MD Anderson Cancer Center. For a while, Yadira's condition improved, her father said, enough for them to come back home for a preseason game Oct. 1 at the AT&T Center.

Because Yonkman didn't play, he was able to sit with Yadira in the stands.

“It was the first time I got to see her this season, and unfortunately also the last,” Yonkman said. Two days later, Yadira died of complications from pneumonia.

At the rosary, Yonkman was stunned to see Yadira clutching photos of him. And next to her in the casket was a hockey-puck bobblehead doll of him.

“That was pretty intense,” Yonkman said. “I was trying to keep it together, but it was hard. I had no idea I had that big of an impact on her.”

Two nights later, with season tickets provided by the Rampage, the Medranos were in the stands for the regular-season opener against Chicago.

“She would have wanted us to go,” Juan Medrano said. “To see the Rampage and to see Nolan. He knows how we feel about him. He knows we appreciate him and love him.”

Despite Yadira's death, Yonkman said he's eager to meet his new Face-Off Against Kids Cancer buddy.

“Anything I can do to bring a little joy to a child's life, I'm going to do,” he said.