On Monday — seven months after her mom died after a hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer — Hannah Carpenter returned to Causeway Street. Her favorite player was there to make the moment even more special.
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It was in a sea of 19,000 fans draped in black-and-gold sweaters where Hannah Carpenter and her mother, Shannon McCarthy, often felt the closest.
Amid a cacophony of cheers, goal-horn salvos, and the familiar soundtrack of “Kernkraft 400,” an unbreakable bond was forged — with treks to TD Garden added to the duo’s docket during birthdays, holidays, and after a stellar showing on Carpenter’s report card.
“I fell in love the first moment I stepped into TD Garden,” Carpenter said. “It was the most insane thing ever. And after that first game, I was like, ‘This is what we’re going to do together. We’re surrounded by people all the time. But when we’re in the Garden together, it’s me and you.’”
On Monday — seven months after McCarthy passed away after a hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer — Carpenter returned to Causeway Street for Hockey Fights Cancer Night, clad in her mother’s Bruins sweater and displaying a custom sign in memory of the person who first sparked her love for hockey.
Her heart was heavy, but Carpenter believed there was no better place to be on Monday — nor a more fitting way to honor her mother — than standing up against the glass in the Bruins’ home barn.
Her favorite Bruins player, Charlie Coyle, agreed.
“I know her pretty well,” Coyle said of Carpenter. “And I know she’s had a tough stretch with a few different things and with her mom passing. I talked to her a little while ago and I knew she said she was going to try to get to that game. She knew it was going to be a big one and her mom would want her there. And of course when she talked to me about it, I encouraged her.”
So when Coyle spotted Carpenter up along the glass during warmups, the stars seemed to align.
Tapping the glass where her sign rested, Coyle tossed a puck over the barrier. Carpenter snagged it out of the air. She fist-bumped the glass in appreciation and then began to cry in a moment that has since gone viral after it was captured by NESN cameras.
It was a fitting moment on a night that has meant so much to a mother-daughter duo united by their love for the Bruins.
“This is what my mom lived for — this game, this team and city and she knew how much Coyle meant to me. And it was just all of this emotion coming at once,” Carpenter said. “I didn’t expect it to get caught on camera. I was like, ‘This is crazy.’
“But it was just one of those things where everything came together at once. It was the emotion of missing my mom, but being really excited to honor her in a way that I think she really would have appreciated. It was just so special.”
Coyle’s on-ice meeting with Carpenter might have only lasted a few seconds. But those fleeting interactions with fans resonate deeply with the Weymouth native, who remembers taking in the sights and sounds of warmups from the other side of the glass at the Garden while growing up.
“It means a lot that they’re there. And they get to share that experience and knowing her mom would love to be there and I know her mom was happy that she was there. We’re all fans of the game, we all love hockey and she shares that bond,” Coyle said. “She shared that with her mom, being a Bruins fan and going to games. That’s just how you’re brought up, really. You just try to pass that on and be a good person and it just makes its way around.”
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