Brian “Red” Hamilton was in the middle of moving equipment on the Vancouver Canucks’ bench in between periods on Oct. 23 in Seattle when he noticed a woman behind the bench pressing her phone against the plexiglass.
The message on her phone was written in a large font and caught the attention of Hamilton, the assistant equipment manager for the Canucks. The message expressed Nadia Popovici’s concern that she believed a mole on the back of Hamilton’s neck was cancerous and that he needed to get it checked.
It turned out she was right.
“I felt bad at the moment because I’m walking off the bench and she put her phone up to the glass and on the phone, it said the mole on the back of your neck is cancer. And it threw me off,” Hamilton recalled on Saturday before the Canucks played their second game of the season in Seattle. “So I kind of just shrugged and kept going. My initial response when I found out was I felt bad because I felt like I didn’t really give her the time of day. I’m excited that she knows because she needs to know.”
The Canucks posted a letter from Hamilton on Saturday retelling the story of how all this played out and expressing his thanks and desire to meet the woman in question. Within barely an hour, both the Canucks and Seattle Kraken said the 22-year-old Popovici had been contacted after spending New Year’s Eve working at a crisis hotline. The pair were able to meet about 90 minutes before the Kraken and Canucks played on Saturday night.
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