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This article was published 19/11/2014 (2132 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

It's easy to forget how blessed we are to live in Winnipeg.

Say what?

Mark Scheifele passes an autographed stick to Connor McDaniel after Tuesday's victory.

Especially lately, with national headlines about yet another aboriginal girl being left for dead, and the reappearance of something else we're infamous for across Canada.

W-w-w-winter.

But I offer you something Winnipeg should be proud of; something so obvious we tend not to recognize it.

We the people from this place. As this story attests.

The Winnipeg Jets celebrated the 10th anniversary of the opening of the MTS Centre with a win Tuesday night, but it was what happened after the three stars were announced that really needs to be celebrated.

At least it is according to a father with an eight-year-old son and that unique perspective.

Chad McDaniel is a former Arizona resident who used to cheer for the ghosts of the original NHL Jets, the Phoenix Coyotes (now the Arizona Coyotes). That was before he married a Winnipeg woman, moved here and bought season tickets to the reincarnated Winnipeg Jets.

So there Chad was at Tuesday's game, sitting with his little boy, Connor, in section 107, just four rows from ice level, when Mark Scheifele, one of the three stars from the game, began skating over to the boards to award a fan a hockey stick; as is the custom after a home victory.

It wasn't Scheifele's own stick, though. It was a specially decorated team-autographed hockey stick.

Then, as Scheifele neared the boards by the penalty box, he pointed at the perfectly positioned little boy in the Andrew Ladd sweater, reached over the glass and dropped the stick into the stands.

What followed next is what prompted Connor's dad to send me an email the next day.

He wanted to share the moment as he experienced it as a father and someone who has been to games in many NHL cities. Not the gift-of-the-stick moment so much as the gift of the Jets organization, their fans and the unique nature of the people and place where we live.

Actually, it was the way the fans treated Connor that moved his dad to contact me. How "wonderful" they were to his son from the moment he clutched the big stick all the way along the triumphant trek out through the MTS Centre, to their parking spot at Portage and Main.

"He literally could not fall asleep until well after midnight because of the treatment of the fans and how special they made him feel," Chad wrote.

He continued: "My wife is from Winnipeg and I'm from the States. I'm not sure if the people of this great city really know and understand how special they are and different from any other sporting organization in North America. This is something that both should be celebrated and recognized by Winnipeg and more importantly the NHL."

Later Wednesday, when I dropped by the family home in Whyte Ridge, Chad introduced me to his wife Susan, 10-year-old daughter Kaitlyn and, of course, Connor. Then he elaborated on how the fans treated his son.

"People wanted to get pictures of him, They were high-fiving him all the way. They made him feel beyond special. The stick was great, but what happened after with the fans in this city was unbelievable."

Really?

Better than the stick?

I'm not sure Connor agreed, but he understood.

"The fans really treated me with respect," the little guy said. "Like they didn't try to steal it."

Which brings us back to that moment after Scheifele pointed at Connor standing behind the glass and lofted the stick into the seats. Connor's arms were outstretched in anticipation. But the stick didn't land in them, it landed nearer to another boy in a Jets sweater who looked a little older.

Connor watched as the older boy picked up the stick

And then handed it to him.

"He could have took it away," Connor said. "But he gave it to me, instead."

Oh, but the story, and his dad's point doesn't end there.

Connor's older sister Kaitlyn had a postscript about another stick and another time. It was last March, after another Jets win, and the same Mark Scheifele handed her his game stick as the team was leaving the ice.

But a girl snatched it away from her. A girl who already had three sticks.

That doesn't sound like something that would happen here.

That's because it didn't happen in Winnipeg.

It happened in Phoenix.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca