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annieqattheperipheral · 6 months

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I WANNA HEAR FROM THIS DUDE. Give him an entire hour of anonymity, let's hear it all

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

TW: skate blade injury, medical, emergency, blood, bruise

Ok this is an EXCELLENT article about neck guards and cut-resistant turtleneck undershirts.

please read to the end. Dr Hayley Wickenheiser provides incredible insight about freak accidents and the medical emergency process that shifts the article a couple of times.

$wall: After Adam Johnson's death, will 'stubborn' NHL players embrace neck-protective gear?

A little more than a year ago, T.J. Oshie read a story about a young boy who was cut in the neck by a skate blade during a youth hockey game. Almost instinctively, Oshie reached for his phone and contacted his partners at Warroad, the hockey apparel company he helped found six years ago. What started as a way to create undershirts that weren’t itchy and irritating had developed into a safety-conscious business that helped develop new, cut-resistant fabrics to protect players’ wrists and Achilles tendons.

Now, Oshie wanted turtlenecks to protect the most dangerously exposed part of a hockey player’s body — their neck, and the carotid artery within. Sure enough, Warroad came up with a sleek turtleneck with its “tilo” design, which includes cut-resistant panels built into the fabric.

It worked.

And Oshie still didn’t wear them.

In fact, he doesn’t believe a single player in the NHL wears anything of the sort. None of the bulky neck guards that are mandatory in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and Ontario Hockey League (but not the Western Hockey League). None of the Kevlar-style fabric turtlenecks that are becoming more readily available all the time, from companies such as Warroad, AYCANE, and Cut-Tex Pro.

Players have their reasons. Oshie said NHL rinks are “hotter” than ever, with guys sweating through several undershirts a game, and the thought of wearing a turtleneck in such a warm environment is unappealing. Players are superstitious, wearing the same shoulder pads they used in juniors, using the same brand of skate they’ve worn since they were kids, using the same tape job and knob style they’ve used forever. And, well, turtlenecks and neck guards don’t look cool. Heck, only Wayne Gretzky and Tomas Plekanec ever really pulled off the look.

“It’s not a cool look having neck guards on,” Oshie said. “For whatever reason, it’s just not something that’s sleek and looks great.”

But then Oshie learned about Adam Johnson’s death on Saturday night. Johnson, a former player for the Pittsburgh Penguins, was cut in the neck by a skate blade during a game in England and died, shaking the hockey community to its core. Players and coaches from around the league expressed their heartbreak over the tragedy. But Oshie did more than that.

He ordered five Tilo turtlenecks from his company. One for him and four for some of his teammates to try. They’ll arrive on Monday. And he’s going to try playing in them. Because Johnson’s death did more than devastate the hockey world. It opened the hockey world’s eyes to an inherent — and possibly preventable — life-threatening risk that comes with playing the game.

At any level.

“I just wish these things never had to be made, and injuries like this would never happen, because it’s so sad,” Oshie said on his way to the Capitals’ game against the Sharks on Sunday evening. “It hits me pretty hard, just thinking about my kids. I could take one to the neck tonight. And for them to not have a father — it’s just so sad and it makes me think twice about protecting myself and my neck out there. Whether it looks cool or not.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jason Dickinson didn’t know what had happened to Boston’s Jakub Lauko last Tuesday at the United Center, he only knew that it looked gruesome. One of Dickinson’s Chicago teammates asked him what had happened and Dickinson speculated that Lauko had hit his head on the boards and “split open.”

After the game, Lauko’s bloodied face was still a topic of conversation in the Blackhawks dressing room. Dickinson heard someone say that it was a skate blade that caught Lauko in the area of his left eye.

“A skate?” Dickinson said. “How did that happen?”

“It was your skate!” a teammate told him.

“Are you kidding me?” Dickinson responded. “When?”

It had happened when Dickinson was falling into the boards after a push from Boston’s John Beecher. Lauko was already down on all fours, and Dickinson’s skate caught him in the face. As mangled as his face was in the aftermath, Lauko was extraordinarily lucky the skate missed his eye. Dickinson never even felt the contact.

Dickinson, after learning it was his skate, immediately checked in with the team’s medical staff to find out if Lauko was OK, and was indescribably relieved to find out he was. Dickinson’s heart went out to Johnson’s family on Sunday, but he also spared a thought for the player whose skate caught Johnson in the neck.

“I feel for (him) as well,” Dickinson said. “He’s on the other end of that and he’s going to have some stuff to work through, because that’s heavy stuff. I guarantee he feels guilty right now, even though it’s a freak accident.”

That’s a word you hear a lot when it comes to skate-cut injuries, whether it’s Pat Maroon’s skate slicing through Evander Kane’s wrist last season or Matt Cooke’s skate tearing Erik Karlsson’s Achilles tendon 10 years ago. A “freak” accident. A “freak” play.

But is it? After all, this is a game played by people moving at exceptional speeds with exceptional force wearing exceptionally dangerous weapons on their feet. If anything, it’s shocking that skate cuts don’t happen more often.

Hayley Wickenheiser, a Team Canada legend, assistant general manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs and emergency physician, bristled at the depiction of such incidents as “freak” occurrences.

“I don’t think this is a freak thing, I think it happens quite a lot,” she said. “It’s just the injuries are superficial, or the players are lucky. This isn’t something that doesn’t happen; it happens a lot in hockey. Sticks come up, skates come up, and the neck is very susceptible. So whatever we can do to make (neck protection) more mainstream and just part of the equipment, the better for the future of the game. It just makes sense to me.”

Indeed, while terrifying incidents like the cuts suffered by Johnson and former Sabres goaltender Clint Malarchuk are thankfully very rare, it seems like every player has a story to tell of a close call, a near miss, a Lauko-style bit of “luck.” Dickinson took a skate on the collarbone during a game against Vegas last season and “immediately panicked,” wondering if a major artery was nicked.

“I remember the ref looked at me right away and said, ‘That was real close, Dickie,’” Dickinson said. “I’m like,’ Yeah, you’re telling me. I can f—ing feel it.”

Oshie was volunteering at a camp at his alma mater, North Dakota, some years ago, when he was rough-housing with the kids. They were dog-piling him on the ice, falling all over each other, laughing hysterically.

“Then one kid came in full speed and slid into the pile feet-first, and he actually hit me square in the face with his skate blade,” Oshie said. “So I had to get stitches above and below my eye. I still have a scar in my eyebrow that goes into my forehead. Luckily, it was flush with my face so it didn’t cut my eye.”

They can’t all be “freak” incidents, right?

“It’s unfortunate,” Blackhawks coach and 21-year NHL veteran Luke Richardson said. “It’s one of the fastest games on Earth, with razor blades on the bottom of your feet. It’s very scary and things happen quick. … I don’t know if there’s any way to guarantee that there’s going to be protection. Even if you do wear something. You can’t be in a tin can top to bottom out there for protection. It’s the risk that the pro players take.”

Richardson cited Oshie’s company as a valuable resource for players, and suggested that with time, neck protection will become normalized in the NHL. When he entered the league in 1987, there were still players playing without helmets. It took years after that for visors to become the norm to protect players’ eyes. Richardson hoped that with neck protection becoming more and more common — and mandatory — in lower leagues, it’s only a matter of time before it “graduates up” to the NHL.

Arizona center Nick Bjugstad, who played with Johnson in Pittsburgh and called him “just a kind human,” said he couldn’t bring himself to watch the video, so he doesn’t know exactly how the cut happened. But he thinks the answer is pretty obvious.

“There are times that your feet go out from under you and you don’t have control,” Bjugstad said. “As far as the precaution going forward, I’m sure it’ll be discussed in the league. It’s even more important on the youth side of things, with the lack of athletic trainers and whatnot. I hope we can figure something out as a hockey community that protects us from something so tragic happening.”

Scott Sandelin, who coached Johnson at Minnesota-Duluth, said making neck protection and Kevlar-style undergear mandatory has come up in conversations around the NCAA championship committee, with longtime Mercyhurst coach Rick Gotkin leading the charge.

“He was like, ‘Why do we wait?’” Sandelin recalled. “Why do we wait for something like this to happen before you mandate something?”

Dickinson said the NHL provided a video at the beginning of the season highlighting the benefits of cut-resistant sleeves to protect the wrists and Achilles tendons, and those have become quite popular around the league. But neck protection remains ignored by everyone other than goaltenders.

Johnson’s death surely opened some eyes around the hockey world to the risk of skate cuts to the neck, and it appeared that several Providence Bruins, in the AHL, wore neck guards on Sunday. That’s a start.

But why does it have to be a years-long process? Why can’t it happen sooner? Why do players have to be grandfathered in to avoid any mandates whenever a new equipment mandate is instituted?

“Because they’re stubborn,” said one NHL equipment manager, who was granted anonymity so he could speak freely. “It’s a monkey-see, monkey-do league. All it would take is one guy to wear it. Then two days to get used to it.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Wickenheiser has a similarly simple solution to getting players past all their superstitions and habits, to get them to embrace what seems like such an obvious solution to a terrifying problem.

“You just put one on,” she said. “I wore one for 20 years with the national team, it didn’t interfere with anything I did. … It’s just like anything else, when one player does it, everyone sees it and it becomes normal. I can’t even remember hockey without visors now, and I grew up watching the world of hockey without visors. I can’t even imagine not playing with a visor with how fast the game is.”

As an emergency physician and all-time hockey great, Wickenheiser is perhaps uniquely qualified to weigh in on the subject. She knows how well-stocked NHL arenas are in terms of medical care. She also knows it’s not nearly enough if, God forbid, a situation similar to what happened to Johnson happens in an NHL game. The thought has frequently crossed her mind that if there were an incident at a practice, she might be the most qualified person in the rink that day. She runs the scenarios in her mind constantly, and “it truly horrifies me.”

“You know how little time and resources you have to save a life in that moment,” she said. “The deck is entirely stacked against you as a physician. In the NHL buildings, there would be qualified physicians, there’s (emergency medical services) in the building. You have every resource at your fingertips. But what you don’t have is time. You need a surgeon and you need blood and you need time, and there’s none of those things in that moment. It’s just such a devastating injury. It freaks me out, for sure.”

It’s something players rarely think about. Can’t think about, really. Richardson said it was similar to a football player coming back from a knee injury — if you’re constantly wondering if the surgically repaired knee will hold up, you’ll never be playing at full strength and full speed. Hockey players have to feel invincible out there in order to take the risks they take on seemingly every shift.

But Oshie said there’s an instinctive, almost unthinking awareness of what your skates are doing at all times. Because the danger is always in the back of your mind, if not the front.

“I think you’re always very conscious of where your skates are when you’re playing,” he said. “I know I am. If someone’s on the ground in front of you, even if you get pushed from behind, you always get your feet out of the way, if that makes sense. It might look terrible if someone is about to fall on someone and goes knees-first, but that’s what you do instead of trying to land on your feet. I just assume that everyone else has that same mentality. But those very freak things happen. You get pushed from behind and you stay on one foot and the other foot comes up. I took a skate blade to my visor in our last preseason game, just this year. So I was a couple inches away from being cut somewhere.”

The game only gets more dangerous with each passing year. Players get bigger, stronger, faster. Skate blades are removable now, and they stay razor-sharp throughout the game, rather than dulling with each shift. Ignoring the risks won’t make them go away.

The introduction of the slap shot led to the goalie mask. Whippier sticks and more dangerous shooters made visors inevitable. Ten or 20 years from now, it’s easy to envision players regularly wearing full face shields. The Karlsson and Kane incidents, among others, helped spur the creation and popularization of wrist and ankle sleeves.

Neck protection will undoubtedly follow. It’s just a matter of when.

And if Johnson’s tragic and shocking death doesn’t prove to be enough to open eyes and open minds, then what will?

“There are options out there, and it’s not a bad idea at all,” Dickinson said. “It’s about awareness. And events like (Saturday) night, events like Kane’s, like Karlsson’s — those really make guys think and get them worried. It’s definitely something I’d consider now. I mean, who cares what it looks like? Looking lame and living is a lot better than the opposite.”

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thepassionthatunitesusall · 2 years

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I feel like we tend to focus on the negative side of hockey a lot (rightly so). But some good stuff has happened today:

Jessica Campbell named AC of Coachella Valley Firebirds. She is the first female to coach behind a bench in the AHL

Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser named AGM of the Toronto Maple Leafs. She is currently the 4th female AGM in the NHL (Émilie Castonguay, Cammi Granato and Meghan Hunter being the others)

Mike Grier named GM of the San Jose Sharks. He is the first Black GM in NHL history

#just some positives for everyone tonight #it's not always bad #hockey #nhl #jessica campbell #coachella valley firebirds #hayley wickenheiser #toronto maple leafs #mike grier #san jose sharks #emilie castonguay #cammi granato #meghan hunter

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himbeaux-on-ice · 2 years

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oooooo

#agm!! neat!!#toronto maple leafs #hayley wickenheiser

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m3tth4ws · 1 year

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#me watching sports with my wife one day #🥲#i love it here #hayley wickenheiser #kyle dubas #toronto maple leafs

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mitchmarner · 2 years

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oh my god

#absolute legend #how is she just the most accomplished person of all time #hayley wickenheiser

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kellykidd · 1 year

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Used some PTO last week, 2 nights in Toronto 💪

HHOF, First leafs game, time with my family, Yorkdale Mall, the Friends Experience. Guys it’s great to be a tourist in the closest city to you that has an airport 😂

#Sidney Crosby #golden goal #hockey hall of fame #hhof #leon draisaitl #tml #toronto maple leafs #scotiabank arena #hayley wickenheiser #Yorkdale mall #the friends experience

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alcreed · 2 years

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WHAT IF?: Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser (Toronto Maple Leafs)

#8-Bit #Pixel art #Hockey #toronto maple leafs #NHL #Hayley Wickenheiser

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poulin-29 · 2 months

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The leafs never fail me

#Hayley wickenheiser #Danielle goyette

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watercress-words · 8 months

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How Life, Loss, and Love are Illustrated by Sports

How Life, Loss, and Love are Illustrated by Sports- lessons from a morning read from Sports Illustrated

I rarely read Sports Illustrated (SI) magazine but one morning Memorial Day weekend while everyone else in my family was still asleep I did. In my medical practice and on this blog, I promote sports as a way to maintain health and fitness, but I’d never pursued organized sports myself-not due to lack of interest, but lack of talent-until I discovered the sport side of ballroom…

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#Ashley Twichell #COVID-19 #Deandre Hopkins #Deni Avdija #Hayley Wickenheiser #NBA #Olympic games #Sports Illustrated #swimming

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virtchandmoir · 1 year

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Wickenheiser, Virtue among 42 former Canadian Olympians banned from entering Russia

333 total Canadians banned in response to sanctions imposed by federal government

April 12, 2023

Hayley Wickenheiser, Tessa Virtue and Clara Hughes are among dozens of former Canadian Olympians banned from entering Russia for signing a statement encouraging the removal of Russian athletes from next year's Paris Olympics amid the country's invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement it was closing its borders to 333 Canadians, most of whom are politicians, in response to the Canadian government periodically imposing sanctions against Russia.

The list includes a group of 42 retired Canadian Olympians who signed a statement last month urging the Canadian Olympic Committee to reject the idea of allowing Russians to participate in the 2024 Games unless Russia withdraws from Ukraine.

The Canadian government was also among a group of 35 governments that released a statement in February saying that, without clarity on a workable neutrality model, "we do not agree that Russian and Belarusian athletes should be allowed back into competition."

The COC said in a statement last month that it supports the exclusion of athletes representing Russia and Belarus from international sport as long as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues.

The International Olympic Committee has not yet made a decision on whether or not Russian and Belarusian athletes will be banned from the Paris Games, saying last month the decision will be made at the appropriate time. The IOC did, however, recommend that individual athletes from both countries who do not have links to the military be allowed to return to competition under neutral status.

—CBC

#tessa #off ice #press #saw this coming

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annieqattheperipheral · 8 months

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Kyle, shanny and the rest of the leafs-- took care of their own in every way they could

From interview w Rodion Amirov's father.

Google translation from Russian so expect errors:

"...is Kyle coming just to raise his weak hand and shake it?"

...fly home *to Toronto...

full interview here

#rodion amirov #kyle dubas #brendan shanahan #hayley wickenheiser #toronto maple leafs #pittsburgh penguins #tw cancer #cancer #fuck cancer

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jackhues · 3 months

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meet rowan (pricey shots and brick wolls au!)

rowan price, niece of nhl goaltender carey price, was born on october 24th, 1998 to carey price's older brother noah price (oc) and his wife of the time, anna price.

pre-rowan notes:

noah price is the older brother of carey price by ten years, making him 46 years old at the start of this au. he was born in vancouver, b.c., and began playing hockey since he could walk. he loved all positions, but he usually played forward. there were a few years where he had to play defense, and he was okay at it. because of that, he missed some of his developmental years, and wasn't good enough to be a professional hockey player (he was good at forward, he could play defense, but he didn't have anything he excelled that)

noah tried to be very present in his siblings' lives because he was much older than them and he was scared to miss out on their lives. carey looked up to him a lot growing up.

noah and anna met in high school, married soon after, and had rowan at around 21/22. she has three little brothers: jadon (2 years younger than her), harley (4 years younger than her), and riley (8 years younger than her).

rowan notes

rowan moved to montreal when she was really young, when her uncle began playing for montreal, because her dad decided to follow him there. they went back to b.c. for the summers, but she went to school in montreal and can speak french fluently.

she gets along very well with her uncle carey, he's about 11 years older than her. she grew up shooting pucks against him, which they both say made them better players (carey says she's an excellent shooter, and rowan says he's the best goalie)

she grew up playing center, and can play wing, but prefers center (she likes faceoffs). rowan became well known for being carey price's niece when she was around 10 years old. everyone thought she was going to be the next best goalie, until they realized she played center, which threw them for a loop.

but then her stats were released, and media began reporting the next greatest female hockey player. she was being compared to hayley wickenheiser, marie-philip poulin - even players like ovi, with the way her shot and quick release was. she kept her socials private (still has those accounts) and made specific public accounts to share with the public.

she went viral on tiktok, becoming a sort of influencer on instagram/tiktok by the time she was 20/21.

at 19 years old, she was invited to team canada's hockey camp for the pyeongchang 2018 winter olympics and made the roster as the youngest player on the team. she scored 8 goals in total, one hat-trick, and had four assists. she ended the olympics having the most points in the tournament, but team canada fell short to the u.s. in the finals.

after finishing high school, she began studying at uoft, playing for their women's hockey team. she was also playing professionally for the toronto furies for two years while studying because it was the only thing she could do. after the cwhl failed, when she was 20, she ended up signing a contract with the toronto six. she continued her studies at uoft and played for the varsity blues as well.

some said it was a lot of hockey, but rowan was scared to drop any of it - just in case women's hockey stopped being a thing one day.

she called her uncle a lot during that time, talking about her fears for her future in hockey. she put aside so many things to focus on hockey, and she wasn't even sure she would be able to play professionally forever.

the first year that joseph played for the toronto marlies, rowan was invited (along with some other players of the toronto six) to help with drills and practice. they had fun, going against each other and trying to outplay the other. after the practice session, she went to joe and was like "something about your play is so familiar, but i can't place it." and joe laughs, going, "well i modeled a lot of my play after carey price - everyone's seen him play." and rowan stares at him and just smiles bcz he has no idea how often she's seen carey price play.

and their story goes from there!

rowan was the first free agent to sign with pwhl toronto (before the draft). she was so excited that she was able to stay in the city that had recently become a home to her. and she's been going off ever since the season started.

she's pretty known, even outside of hockey (queen) - and joseph supports her all the time.

general au notes:

jadon, harley, and riley all play hockey, but none of them except riley are interested in going pro. jadon's actually an nba player for the new york knicks, and harley's in university for mechanical engineering (wants to work in f1). riley plays defense and he's 17 right now, entering his draft year this year. he's projected to go high in the draft.

rowan's best known for her clutch/pricey shots, which she almost never misses. she has a very good eye and is good at controlling the puck. she can get goals at the most needed moments - and even if it looks like it's complicated/coming at a pricey time, she's great at going through with it

rowan and joe practice against each other all the time, and riley joins them occasionally too

this exists in the same au as my other three main aus

THANK YOU to everyone who sent stuff in and helped me out, i love all of you <3 i wish i could make an au with every single idea you guys sent in because they were all amazing! sorry if i couldn't get your ideas, but i hope you know i appreciate all of you :))

#pricey shots and brick wolls! au #naqia's au's!

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ohpuckthat · 2 years

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Leaf to Leaf... (Auston Matthews)

Pairing: Auston Matthews x Fem!Reader Established Relationship

A/N: I was binge-watching Leaf to Leaf videos and got this idea. I don't know. I'm trying to get back into writing... again. Hope you like it 😊

When I was told that I was paired up with Auston for the Leaf to Leaf this season, I was a little nervous. We had been dating for almost 5 years but we had kept it fairly private. People knew we were dating but we rarely talked about each other in the media or posted about our relationship. The whole thing with Leaf to Leaf is to know a little more about the players.

I took a deep breath as we both walked into the room, various action shots of the team on the ice on the wall behind a table with two stools. I hopped up on one of the stools as Auston sat across from me. We did a quick mic check and got started.

"You ready?" He asked, playing with the flashcards in his hands.

"Ready as I'll ever be." I smiled, playing with the rings on my fingers.

"Awesome. So, we're starting deep. How does it feel to be the second woman to play in the NHL?"

"Oh wow. Okay, um. We are starting deep." I laughed, clearing my throat. "Well, firstly, it's incredible to be playing in arguably the best hockey league. I honestly didn't think I would be playing in the OHL let alone the NHL. I think we're making steps toward having hockey be for everyone, um, especially with Hayley Wickenheiser and Danielle Goyette running our development department and we had um, Taya Currie drafted by the Sarnia Sting in the OHL so it's really exciting to see what's happening."

"Well said." He smiled, placing his hand on mine.

"I hope that answer wasn't too long," I said, turning my attention to the crew.

"It's perfect." We heard from behind the camera.

"Thank you."

"Alright, next question. This one's a lot lighter and I honestly want to know your answer to this too. Thoughts on the moustache?"

"Your moustache?" He nodded. "I like it. I will say, and I've told you this before, I prefer it with the stubble but I like it. I like the clean-shaven too though. I just like your face."

"I like your face too."

"Thanks." I smiled, my confidence skyrocketing.

"Anytime." He smirked. "How did it feel scoring your first NHL hat trick?"

"Oh god. I was so hyped. To have done it in Toronto and my family was at that game just made it ten times better. I remember hopping over the boards thinking Spezz and Simmer were right behind me but it was you and Mitch and it didn't click until the puck went in the net and you literally picked me up."

"I was just so proud."

"Well, and it made it a little bit more special have you two on the ice. I'm probably the closest with you guys on the team so, yeah."

"You're so sweet. Alright, last question. Favourite trip?"

"Oh, I'm between two. My mom's dream vacation destination has always been Australia and New Zealand so we went just the two of us and had a blast. Spent most of the trip at the beach but I think it was just what we needed and I have a lot of good memories of that trip."

"What was the other one?"

"You invited me on your family vacation to Cabo."

"Oh yeah." He laughed, playing with the flashcards before setting them down. "That was a good trip."

"It was. I spent a lot of time with your sisters and your mom. But yeah."

"Okay, so we'll do the speed round and then a game. Then we'll switch to Y/N asking Auston questions." The producer said,

"Sounds good," I said, readjusting myself on the stool.

"You ready?" Aus asked, focusing on the cards in his hands.

"Mhmm."

"Go to Tim's order?"

"Um, medium peppermint tea and a pack of Timbits."

"Winter of summer?"

"Winter."

"Blue Jays or Raptors."

"Oh, uhh. That's hard. Um, Blue Jays."

"Favourite show?"

"Uh, The Office."

"Good answer. Me or Mitch?"

"Steph." I quickly shot out without even thinking. "Is that really one of the questions?" I asked, turning to the crew.

"No that was mine. I wanted to know who you'd choose." Auston laughed, sliding over the questions.

"Yeah. I'm gonna stick with Steph."

"I'd choose you." He said under his breath. "And finally, waffles or pancakes?"

"Pancakes, with Canadian maple syrup."

"Nice. You do make really good pancakes." He smiled, swinging his legs under the table slightly.

"Pancakes were one of the first things I learned how to make."

"Really?" He asked as the crew was getting the game ready for us.

"Yeah. I started with breakfast foods cause it's my favourite and it's a lot of easy and good basics."

"I did not know that."

"We're all learning things today!" I laughed placing both hands on top of his. The producer walked in front of the camera and passed me a pair of headphones and Auston another stack of flashcards.

"So, Y/N, you're going to put those headphones on and you're going to try and guess what Auston's saying and then you'll swap when the music runs out. Pretty simple."

"Awesome. Sounds fun." I said, placing the headphones on.

I could not hear a thing. Auston had his face turned to the camera. I tried my best to guess what he was saying but I couldn't make it out. He finally turned to me and nodded before saying something.

"I have no clue what you just said." He tried again, speaking even slower. "One more time," I asked, leaning forward even more. He spoke once more, even slower this time. "Scotiabank arena?"

"Yes!" He yelled, nodding frantically. "Next one."

He turned to the camera again and said something really quick. When he turned back to me, he had a huge smile on his face. He nodded again and said the next clue. I shook my head, missing the whole thing. He said it again, much slower and in parts.

"June..." He nodded. "Okay, June... Ele... eleventh?"

"Yes!"

"Our anniversary?" I laughed, setting my elbows on the table. He nodded, looking back down at the clues. I shook my head and turned my attention back to his lips. Learning from the last two times, he took it slow. "I?" He nodded. "La... la. Love?" Another nod. "Okay? You? I love you."

"I love you too." He smiled, moving one hand below the table. I furrowed my brows in confusion but couldn't think too much about it before he had started again.

"Will, Willy? No, sorry. Okay, it's will. Y... you. Okay. Mmmm... mmm... Maa... Oh God, this is hard. Maa... Marry?" And just like that, my heart dropped.

The music stopped and it felt like the only people in the world were me and him. He stood up and took the headphones off my ears, and pulled me to my feet. He lowered down onto one knee and opened a small box to reveal a beautiful ring.

"So? Y/N M/N L/N, will you marry me?"

I lost all my words. Through tears, I nodded, hoping he would understand. He grabbed my left hand and slid the ring over my finger. He stood up and pulled me into his arms.

"I love you," I whispered, planting small kisses just below his ear.

"I love you too."

#auston matthews imagines #auston matthews imagine #auston matthews #austonmatthews #nhl imagines #nhl imagine

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