Cancer patient Niko Greco, 7, in one of his regular videos to the Ducks' Patrick Maroon, notes that he didn't recognize his friend in his playoff beard. (0:11)

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- When 7-year-old Niko Greco was recently given his special day by the Make-A-Wish people, he had three priorities: Star Wars Legos, his favorite macaroni and cheese and visiting his pal Patrick Maroon.

Before the start of this season, the Grecos happened to be at a roller-hockey tournament where one of the rinks had been named in Niko’s honor when Maroon stopped by to say hello.

He knelt down and shook Niko’s hand and then, almost without thinking, asked if he’d like to stop by the Ducks game the next day. The game happened to be against Niko’s favorite team, the Los Angeles Kings, but after getting a silent nod from his father, Niko agreed that it would be OK. The entire Greco family attended the game as Maroon’s guests and the relationship blossomed from there.

There have been visits back and forth. The families spent Easter together when Maroon’s mother was in town for a visit.

Leukemia patient Niko Greco helps his friend Patrick Maroon celebrate his birthday. Courtesy of Greco Family

And so it was that on the day before the Anaheim Ducks opened their second-round series against the Calgary Flames, a big limousine pulled up in front of Maroon’s house and his young friend excitedly showed off some new Lego Star Wars model sets.

Later, Maroon would lie on his couch and think about Niko Greco and his battle with leukemia and think about his own son, Anthony, who is 6. Maroon thought about his own journey to the National Hockey League and how sometimes the moments you least expect are the ones that carry with them the most lasting meaning.

"He's the type of kid who could have done anything," Maroon recalled during a conversation at his dressing room stall at the Honda Center. "But all he wanted to do was go to Legoland and come see me. So, I mean, he stopped by my house and I got to see all his Legos and he was so excited to show me. That brings me up more than it brings him up. It’s just emotional.

“Then, when you go back down inside and you lay down you’re like, wow, that’s pretty touching. Very touching and it makes you want to call your son right away and see how he’s doing after school. I’m lucky to be a part of it and he’s going to fight and he’s going to push through this. He’s going to battle. I believe he’s going to fight through this whole thing.”

Niko was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia on Jan. 12, 2014.

The active youngster, who was just starting to play hockey, had been having extremely high fevers and acute pain -- first in his leg and then his arm -- that miraculously disappeared only to reappear in a different part of the body days later.

Doctors initially were focused on treating the pain but finally, at the request of Niko’s parents, Mark and Erin, they did blood work and found that Niko’s white blood cell count was 27,000, almost twice the level for a child his age.

Tests confirmed within an hour that Niko had leukemia.

It was a relief, in some ways, to know what was wrong with their son, the oldest of three children, Mark Greco said.

Part of Niko Greco's wish was to take a few shots with his buddy Patrick Maroon. Courtesy of the Anaheim Ducks

“You want to know right away what’s going on with your child,” said Mark, who grew up playing hockey in the Anaheim area in the junior Ducks program and also played for a time in Jasper, Alberta.

The diagnosis launched a three-year treatment cycle for Niko that began with chemotherapy and steroids. An issue with the steroids led to a bubbling of the colon that elevated Niko from a standard-risk leukemia patient to very high risk.

In February 2014, during the Sochi Olympics, he couldn’t eat for 12 days and had to be nourished with a feeding tube that ran from his nose to his stomach.

That led to a new treatment plan with higher doses of chemotherapy. But Niko was allergic to one of the chemotherapy drugs and that led to a more time-consuming way of administering the drugs that involved a series of shots to Niko’s legs three times a week for two weeks.

“He just takes it like a champ,” Mark Greco said.

“Coming from a kid that has that hockey-player mentality,” Mark added. “He just doesn’t complain of pain even to this day with all the medicines and everything. He just never complains.”

The intense phase of treatment has given way to a maintenance phase.

“All that hard-core stuff is over with,” Mark said. “It’s still hard but we get to be home.”

There is a steady regimen of chemotherapy pills, steroids once a month and a series of lumbar punctures that require Niko to be sedated while spinal fluid is replaced with chemotherapy medication.

“He hates it,” Mark said. "He absolutely hates it. Losing control of your body and being put under kind of stinks."

Niko is about halfway through the maintenance phase of his treatment. At the end, if all goes according to plan, he will be declared fully and completely cancer-free.

So far, so good. A year ago this week, the cancer had been beaten back from Niko’s body although he is not technically in remission, his father said.

“We won the battle, but we haven’t won the war yet,” he said.

That Maroon was even in California to meet Niko is something that makes you wonder at it all.

Early in the 2010-11 season Maroon, drafted 161st overall in 2007 by the Philadelphia Flyers, was off to a great start for the Flyers’ American Hockey League affiliate. But after scoring five times and collecting eight points in the team’s first nine games, Maroon was sent home by the team.

The exact nature of the transgression was never made public, but suffice it to say it rocked Maroon.

“I had a great start, a lot of goals in the first nine games and played well and got sent home and I was sitting on my couch for a month and a half and talked to my family and I was like, ‘I’m done, I don’t think I’m going to play anymore,” Maroon said. "It came to the point that it was like that. I thought I would never play in the NHL ever again."

But someone, somewhere had a different plan.

On Nov. 21, 2010, Anaheim GM Bob Murray acquired Maroon in a deal that created the slightest ripple on the surface of the hockey world. But it changed everything for Maroon and by extension, perhaps, the fortunes of the Ducks themselves and certainly the Greco family.

“I thought I was just going to maybe give it a shot overseas or go to the coast [ECHL], and that was a very dark time in my place,” Maroon recalled. "It was hard. And to get that phone call I’ll never forget it right before Christmas break, I got traded, it was uplifting but kind of like, OK, do I really want to do this again? Do I really want to go through this?

“And my dad’s like, you know what, you have a clean slate, go there and push yourself and prove to them that you can be an American League player and prove to them that you want to be in the NHL again. And then it all snowballed from there and everything just went positive from there."

Trent Yawney was one of Maroon’s coaches with the Ducks’ American Hockey League affiliate in Syracuse, New York, where he went after the trade.

“I had heard through the grapevine some of the negatives,” Yawney said. “When I first met Patty, I basically said that the slate was wiped clean. We were going to have a working relationship and we needed him to be a good player for this team.”

Maroon, a big piece of humanity at 6-foot-3, 229 pounds, got into better condition, worked hard at practice and helped Yawney and his Syracuse teammates make the playoffs after being buried in the standings.

He could fight. He could command the puck. He could score.

"There was a lot of pieces and I was going, 'Why isn’t this guy playing in the National Hockey League, is it because everybody has this perception of him off the ice or what is it?'" said Yawney, who is now a part of Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau’s staff.

“Once he got his chance up here, he started to show what he can really do. Probably from the top of the circles down to the net one of the strongest guys to knock off the puck in this league."

The 2013-14 season marked Maroon’s first full season in the NHL. This season, he has spent a considerable amount of time playing with the Ducks’ top two forwards, Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry.

At one point, Patrick Maroon thought his hopes of an NHL career were over. He didn't know that one day he'd be in the playoffs. Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports

In Game 1 of the second round, he scored a goal standing on the edge of the crease off a no-look backhand pass from Getzlaf. The trio has become an essential part of the Ducks' success as the series heads to Calgary for Games 3 and 4, the Ducks up 2-0.

Before the start of this second-round playoff series, Niko predicted that Patrick would score seven goals against the Flames.

But Niko understands what’s most important. Although he only recently turned 7, Niko knows that friends cheer each other on. Maroon has encouraged Niko to get back on the ice -- he is able to practice now without any contact -- while Niko regularly sends good-luck video messages to Maroon before games.

“It makes you think about life a lot. And knowing what a 6-year-old kid goes through every day with the chemo, the pills he has to take and what he has to go through sitting in the hospital and getting IVs in him,” Maroon explained, his eyes reddening with emotion. "The kid fights and he’s so strong. He’s so good and all he wants to do is to be with his friends and go back to school and do that."

Makes you wonder about life’s intersections.

Anaheim's Patrick Maroon has become an important part of the Greco family's lives. Courtesy of the Anaheim Ducks

For Niko Greco and his family, having Maroon move into their orbit has made an otherwise unbearable situation more bearable. As they have had to concentrate on their son’s medical care, some of their own support system has frayed with friends drifting away.

Maroon has helped fill that void.

“Niko has found a lot of strength through Patrick,” Mark Greco said. "They give each other strength through what they’re enduring and how they’re enduring it."

So, it’s funny how things work out. How maybe there is a place we’re all supposed to be, people we’re all supposed to meet along the way.

Ask the Greco family, and they’ll tell you that they believe strongly Maroon was meant to be in their lives and help them all through a trying time.

This isn’t a just-for-now relationship, Mark Greco predicted.

“This is a lifelong relationship,” he said.

As for Maroon, meeting Niko Greco has perhaps reinforced the notion that this is home and that Maroon is, after all that has happened, supposed to be here too.

Last summer Maroon signed a three-year contract extension.

He’s had a chance to watch his son, Anthony, meet Niko and the rest of the Greco family.

The two boys have, in their own way, become pals too. Anthony provides some of the sense of normalcy that the disease has robbed Niko and his family of for the past 16 months.

“The look on [Niko’s] face, the excitement, he wasn’t thinking about the chemo, he wasn’t thinking about the cancer, he was thinking about how he wanted to play with my son and have as much fun as he can,” Maroon said. “To see that in someone’s eyes and especially in the parents’ eyes, it is truly amazing. They do such a good job. The family’s sweet. It’s just been one of those things where I enjoy it. I enjoy bringing excitement to some little kid every day and knowing that he’s going to be OK and knowing that when he sees me, he’s not thinking about anything else. And, to me, that’s a special feeling because I have a 6-year-old at home and I could be going through this too, so it makes you think about what life’s all about.”