Favorite memory of season: Bruins honor 'Mighty Quinn'

The NHL season was paused on March 12 due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus. During the break in the action, NHL.com writers will each look back at his or her favorite memory of the season so far. Today, staff writer Amalie Benjamin writes about a moment before the game between the Boston Bruins and San Jose Sharks at TD Garden on Oct. 29.

Quinn Waters walked to center ice at TD Garden on Oct. 29, the cheers of a packed crowd raining down on him. It was a momentous occasion for a kid who had spent all summer relegated to his house after undergoing chemotherapy for a tumor on his brain stem commonly known as a medulloblastoma.

The 3-year-old, nicknamed "Mighty Quinn," was being honored on Hockey Fights Cancer night, before a game between the Boston Bruins and San Jose Sharks.

It was a beautiful moment and my favorite so far this season.

I love hockey and I love watching hockey games, the scintillating goals, the celebrations and the saves. But what appeals to me most about sports and about hockey is how it allows us to come together, how it can heal. That was what that moment was for me, recalling how the Waters family was able to unwind during Quinn's chemotherapy treatments while watching the Bruins in the Stanley Cup Final, how Bruins forward and fellow Weymouth, Massachusetts, native Charlie Coyle visited Quinn over the summer, how the Waters family was buoyed and sustained through sports and through hockey.

Hockey meant something to them. The Bruins meant something to them.

"We were in his worst chemotherapy during the Stanley Cup Playoffs," Quinn's father, Jarlath Waters, said, before the puck drop. "Quinn was probably at his worst, as far as health-wise. And we watched every game in the room. The Bruins got us through some rough nights, just me and him. So, this means a lot."

During the summer, when Quinn was required to stay in his house, the family had many visitors drop by, from Coyle to the Dropkick Murphys to police officers and firefighters, all of them gathering outside his "Quinn-dow." There were songs and nerf gun fights. It was a bright spot.

On Oct. 29, it was Quinn who got to pay a visit, in his first public outing since his treatment was completed. Fans got to see Quinn, talk to his father, understand what it meant to the boy to have people he knew and those he didn't know show up for him.

Quinn called Coyle his "best friend."

"I'm from Weymouth and it's kind of like one of your own people, someone from your neighborhood is battling something," Coyle said. "It's how the community comes together and rallies around that one person because they're struggling and it's how everyone picks him up. So you want to be part of that and help out and make your community a better place with better people. That's why you do it."

After Quinn dropped the puck, Coyle scored the third goal for the Bruins in a 5-1 win against the Sharks.

But what mattered more was the walk to center ice, the puck drop that Bruins captain Zdeno Chara ceded to Coyle, the relationship struck up between Quinn and Coyle, the family helped through a dark time and into the light.

This was hockey at its best.