What the Maple Leafs and Bruins had to say about playing in the wake of tragedy in Toronto
At the Air Canada Centre on Monday night, the Bruins and Maple Leafs paused for a moment of silence to honor the 10 lives lost and 15 injured during the deadly attack in Toronto. The incident occurred 10 miles from the arena, hours before the teams took to the ice for Game 6 of their first-round series.
A moment of silence for those affected by today’s tragic event in Toronto. https://t.co/lcVhCB36gS
— NHL (@NHL) April 23, 2018
After the moment of silence ended, Martina Ortiz-Luis, the Maple Leafs’ 16-year-old anthem singer, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Then, in a moment that conjured up memories of Rene Rancourt in April of 2013, Ortiz-Luis let the Toronto crowd take over for an emotional rendition of “O Canada.”
Extra emotion behind the singing of our Canadian National anthem tonight and not just because it’s a playoff game. @CityNews pic.twitter.com/m97fHCPTgx
— Adrian Ghobrial (@AdrianGhobrial) April 23, 2018
Here’s what the Maple Leafs and Bruins had to say about the attack, and the game that followed:
Toronto
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the people that lost their lives today and all the people that are injured. Senseless deaths, to say the least. It changes the new normal in a family’s life forever. Whether it be no mom, no dad, no brother, no sister, or whatever it may be. Obviously, we’re fortunate to live in such a fantastic city with great first responders and the work they’ve done, but it’s so important that we rally around these people, help out, and do everything we can. We’ve got a fantastic city and we can’t let this get it the way of what we’ve got going. Tragic, to say there least.
Obviously, it’s such a tragedy. It’s terrible. To see all the people coming together in a moment of silence before the game to kind of unite a city after something like that is special, but obviously, it was a tough day for the city.
Reading about this stuff, it’s coming up too often now so it sucks but, you know, we send our love and we hope everyone’s okay…This world’s made for loving each other and making each other better and the things that have been happening this last year are just unfortunate. We need to stop them, someway, somehow, but obviously this is a big win for us after that emotional day.
Boston
You can’t block something like that out of your mind, obviously, but you have to. That’s kind of the hand your dealt today. You try to stay focused on the task at hand. At the same token, you wonder what the hell’s the matter with people to be quite honest with you. But here we are, we have to play it and I think both teams did a good job with it.
That goes beyond the game of hockey. We’ve been battling in a tight series in the last two weeks and to be honest with you, I know the city of Boston has been through it unfortunately in 2013, and we’re all behind the city of Toronto. And obviously our thoughts and prayers go to everyone involved in this tragedy.
A very tragic event, obviously. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the families and everyone involved. It’s incredible the way you see cities come together when things like this happen and it was another great example of that tonight here in Toronto. I have a lot of respect for the people in Toronto and the way they’re handling it.
