Pink in the Rink Night More Than Just Another Game For Barber, Johansen
Mixed-Up Productions and the Hershey Bears have teamed up for six years to present Pink the Rink night at a Hershey Bears hockey game in October, and every year, they seem to be able to outdo the previous year either in terms of what they offer off the ice or what happens on it.
This year was no different as Sunday night’s crowd of 10,489 witnessed someone other than the Hershey captain take part in the ceremonial puck drop before the game.
Riley Barber, whose mother Stacy is a breast cancer survivor, skated out to meet Joe Whitney, Hartford’s captain for the puck drop. And, as he told us after the game, he coached his mother up on just how to drop the puck.
“It was a good drop though, I made sure,” Barber quipped. “She had to have a good drop.” And according to her son, it was perfect.
But the special night didn’t end there, as rookie defenseman Lucas Johansen scored his first goal. We learned after the game that he also had ties to breast cancer.
"You know what’s funny is that my grandma, she battled breast cancer and I wrote Lilly, her name was Lilly, I wrote it on the stick and that was one of the first thoughts I had was that that one was for Lilly, my Dad’s mom,” Johansen said post-game.
For some time, Johansen’s goal stood as the potential game-winner, but that just wasn’t in the cards; although the Bears did emerge victorious in back-to-back games for the first time this season.
Off the ice, the party on the concourse, courtesy of Mixed-Up Productions included lots of music and the fan-favorite, Pink the Rink t-shirts. Many fans arrived at Giant Center wearing ones from previous years.
“I love to see each year fans come back wearing the shirts from the first year, the second, or the third,” Mike Miller, DJ and owner of Mixed-Up Productions said. “Or get excited over the new products that we have, so we always try to get something new and fun and different because this is about having fun and still finding a cure.”
Those efforts and the fans’ willingness to support a cause are not lost on Barber.
“It was awesome,” Barber said of his Pink the Rink Night experience with his mother. “Any time you can recognize someone like that for a cause like cancer and breast cancer and the families affected by it, it’s always a great thing and especially to raise awareness. I think hockey’s done a great job, up in the NHL with Hockey Fights Cancer and in Hershey this is a great event put on and it meant a lot to her and it meant a lot to me.”
And Stacy, if you’re reading, he really did say that the drop was perfect!
