Maple Leafs visit Hospital For Sick Children for holiday celebration

TORONTO -- The Toronto Maple Leafs have a long-standing tradition dating back to the 1920’s of making an annual visit to the Hospital For Sick Children around Christmas but for the past three years, it was not quite the same.

Challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the team for visiting the hospital as a group. For two years, the team organized appearances via Zoom and last year, the Maple Leafs invited patients, who were able, to attend practice and partake in Christmas activities following the workout.

Finally this year, for the first time since 2019, things seemed back to normal.

“It felt good to be back in the building,” said Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly. “It’s an important thing that the team does within the community. It’s good for our guys to go there and spend the day being involved.”

The team visited the hospital on Monday and met with patients and their families, played games including air hockey and billiards and took part in various crafts like bracelet-making.

“It was good,” said Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews. “I think it’s always a very powerful visit, not only for the kids but for the players as well.”

Matthews, himself, has long supported Sick Kids and this year, appeared in a commercial produced by actor Ryan Reynolds to raise awareness for the hospital’s holiday fundraising campaign.

“It started with my dad I think,” Matthews said, when asked about how his partnership with Sick Kids began. “Both my parents encouraged me to get involved in something within the community. I did some research and found Sick Kids and all the great work they do.”

“It’s been great. Ryan being who he is, being involved with the hospital as well and being able to do some cool stuff to raise awareness and raise money for the hospital, it was cool to be a part of his campaign and commercial this year and I think it turned out really well.”

Coach Sheldon Keefe said even though days off during the season are few and far between, using one to attend the hospital as a group is not something that requires a lot of convincing for the players.

“There’s tremendous value in it. I think it’s important to recognize first of all the impact you can have and Auston certainly does that. There’s also keeping you grounded and recognizing the difficulties other people are going through and to be able to contribute to help, give your time to bring a smile to people’s faces or raise money, whatever it might be... Not just Auston, but throughout our team, there’s a number of things I’m privy to behind the scenes that our players and organization does and I think those are things we should be doing. You’re proud to see it happening and always want to do what you can.”