Brotherly love

Three games into Tim Schaller's NHL career, he scored his first NHL goal, in his first game against the backyard Boston Bruins. But that's not what the 28-year-old remembers most about that unforgettable night.

"I'm skating around in warm-up and Brian Gionta taps me and says 'Timmy, you got some fans here?' I look over at the glass and I see seven or eight of my buddies with big Timmy heads," recalls Schaller, referencing three-and-a-half feet tall cut outs of his head. "Luckily they picked a decent picture of me. I saw that and I couldn't stop laughing. I was just trying not to fall in warm-up, I was so nervous playing in Boston for the first time, and I see all my buddies there. It loosened me up."

Schaller, who hails from Merrimack, New Hampshire, an hour north of Boston, was a member of the Buffalo Sabres and recalled two games prior. Not knowing how long he'd be up with the Sabres, friends and family made the most of Schaller's first game at the Garden by plastering the glass at the Bruins end of the ice with massive cut outs of Schaller's mug.
"I remember the look on his face when he saw us, it was just hilarious," said Dave Schaller, Tim's older brother of three years, and the brains behind the Timmyheads.

Tim and Dave are as inseparable as brothers come; the pair had a tight bond growing up and 10 years ago it became even stronger when Dave was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a rare condition in which the body stops producing enough new blood cells.
Dave, who beat testicular cancer two years prior, was a freshman in college when he collapsed after a Celtics game while visiting his family during spring break. The next day he received six pints of blood after being diagnosed with aplastic anemia, and a bone marrow transplant was needed to save his life.

Tim was 16-years-old at the time and his parents kept him in the dark about what was happening, although he was brought in for a blood test to see if he was a match to donate bone marrow to Dave.
"It was a confusing time and I didn't know what was going on because my parents didn't want to scare me," said Tim. "Looking back now, I'm pretty thankful they did because I would have been freaked out knowing how close my brother was to not surviving this."
Tim was a 25 per cent match to donate bone marrow. It wasn't what the doctors were hoping for, but it was worth trying to save Dave's life. Tim didn't think twice about it, despite the daunting 100 needles that would be drawing marrow from his hip. He was put under the knife immediately - well, almost immediately.

"Typical me, always getting in the way of things, I ended up getting strep throat a few days before I'm supposed to give the marrow," said Tim. "So we had to push the procedure a few day back. My brother is almost dying and I had to get strep throat and delay the process a little bit; I laugh about it now, but it wasn't funny at the time."
At the time, not much was funny, but as the Schaller brothers recalled all that went into saving Dave's life, some humorous stories arose.
"We were both in the hospital at one point," explained Dave, "I'm on one floor and Tim's on another, and I was waiting to get his blood for the transplant. My mom is with me and my dad is with him and all of the sudden it's a code blue, Tim passed out from giving too much blood."
"Tell the story the right way at least!" laughed Tim. "They were testing me to be his donor and I had to give 18 vials of blood and I passed out after giving 15. And even after I passed out they had to keep taking my blood. I was sweating so much, I had to borrow a new shirt from Dave when I was finished."
The bone marrow transplant and blood transfusions were exactly what Dave needed. He's made a full recovery and as a way of giving back to the hospital that helped save his life, Timmyheads became a thing.
Tim played 35 games for the Sabres over two seasons before signing with the Bruins. That's when Timmyheads really took off, although modestly at first, with $5,000 raised during the 2015-16 season for the Jimmy Fund, which supports Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Last season, thanks to increased exposure for Timmyheads and a career-high 12 goals and 10 assists for Tim, the Jimmy Fund received $20,000 from the Schallers and their big heads.
"He's giving back to something that's true to his heart," said Tim. "I'm so proud of what he's doing."
Looking back, the scariest part of this entire ordeal for Dave was putting Tim under the knife.

"If he did this for me and then didn't succeed getting to where he is today, that's the scariest part for me," said Dave. "He was a good player growing up, had a lot of potential, had agents and teams always looking at him; if this would have changed anything, that would have hindered the experience."
Tim is now nearly 200 games into his NHL career, a career Dave takes partial credit for.
"I taught him everything he knows," laughed Dave. "He wouldn't be where he is today without me…and I can say the same thing, I wouldn't be here without him."
Timmyheads and t-shirts can be purchased at
www.tim-schaller.com
.