The Lightning Foundation and MicroLumen commemorate 10-year anniversary of Honorary Captain Program

Sports create bonds.

They instill lifetime links among players, remarkable connections throughout waves of fanbases.

Then there are the bonds that transcend the game itself. The ones between proverbial heroes and those searching and fighting for more.

These are the bonds the Lightning Foundation and MicroLumen strive to create with the Honorary Captain program, which commemorated it’s ten-year anniversary during the Lightning’s win over the Penguins Tuesday night.

The program welcomes four guests a year to experience the ultimate day-in-the-life with the Bolts. Through the Foundation’s partnership with the Children’s Dream Fund, MicroLumen provides two wishes per season to local children, and two more through efforts from the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Each patient starts with the full package, including morning skates, player visits, Zamboni rides, VIP seats, special jumbotron segments and, of course, a badge of honor as the honorary captain for the game. And Tuesday’s home tilt against the Pens acknowledged a decade of life-changing work—remembering the patients and moments that have made this program special, starting with the night’s biggest inspiration in Apollo Sudbury.

Sudbury was diagnosed with a rare form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma in November 2024 at the age of 12. Over the next four months, he would undergo surgeries, four rounds of intensive chemotherapy, medical appointments, a blood transfusion, and countless hours of unabated courage. All of which persevered. Apollo’s first-line treatment plan is now complete, and his first post-treatment scan on March 4 revealed no evidence of cancer.

Sudbury currently laces up the skates for the Tampa Bay Crunch AA team where he lives and breathes hockey. On Tuesday, he hit the Lightning locker room with Stanley Cup champions Ruslan Fedotenko and Ryan McDonagh.

During the 2022-23 season, Honorary Captain Skyla Almond got to spend a day hanging with new pals Brian Bradley and Jon Cooper before connecting with her icon, Steven Stamkos—a light morale boost amid a nonstop road to recovery at just seven years old.

"Everyone from the start of the day till the end of the night after the game was amazing,” Almond’s aunt Tinamarie Farell told us in 2024. “They treated her so special inside the locker rooms after a hard morning of practice and the players were all so sweet…They gave her all the time she wanted.”

And then there are the legends like Tripp “Trippy” Nugent, who latched onto a team and fanbase’s hearts wherein he still resides. The Florida youngster became a part of the Honorary Captain family in 2022 after being diagnosed with a DIPG brain tumor at age six. Nevertheless, Trippy became renowned for instilling his relentless joy, positivity and trademark smile on just about everyone—and every boat—he came across. The news of Trippy’s passing, almost one year ago this week, remains one of the more heart-rending days in 401 Channelside Drive memory.

The honorary captains who are no longer with us constitute a tough reality that can come with initiatives like these. But their legacies live on in their families and the remarkable work they tend to conjure up—like the Nugent family’s Team Trippy Foundation, dedicated to supporting children diagnosed with cancer.

“One of our biggest takeaways is the impact the program has on the families,” said Hook Namburi of MicroLumen. “The kids—it’s amazing—most of the time you wouldn’t even know they're sick. So it’s great to see these visits help lighten the family’s burden, too.”

The countless stories brought to life by the Honorary Captain program over the past decade go well beyond this article. And each story, without fail, is a revelation of the human condition—beaming with hope, originality, inspiration and the biggest smiles you’ve ever seen in your life. Tuesday night’s observance epitomized the best of it. The next ten years ought to live up to its heights.