Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo once considered retirement due to his daughter Evelyn's health situation.
Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo once considered retirement due to his daughter Evelyn's health situation.
In the fall of 2022, Pietrangelo was left to decide if hanging up his skates and retiring from professional hockey to be with his four-year-old daughter was the best thing to do.
Pietrangelo and his wife, Jayne Cox, believed their daughter had a bad case of the flu before things began to spiral. The flu she was suffering from quickly turned into encephalitis, which stripped her of her motor skills and wouldn't allow her to open her eyes for five days. She was diagnosed with a type of brain lesion that practically paralyzed her for days.
Because of this, the 34-year-old took a leave of absence from the team for nine days but had strong considerations of making it a permanent move. Thankfully for Evelyn and the Pietrangelo family, she slowly recovered, allowing her to be by her father's side to celebrate accomplishments like winning the Stanley Cup and recently being named to Team Canada's 4 Nations Face-Off roster.
"Yeah, it's been a long couple of years, but sometimes it makes you take a step back and really enjoy the small things," said Pietrangelo. "So I don't take for granted that I'm on this team and I have the opportunity to share with them. Pretty cool for me."
Some of those small things Pietrangelo is referring to are the players he gets to play with and against. Every night with the Golden Knights, he plays alongside Jack Eichel and Mark Stone but is excited that his children will get to meet and take pictures with other Canadian stars, even if his children are American.
"I think the cool thing when you do have kids, and you're playing in this league is you have to experience something that not many kids will get to. They might not understand it yet. But I always say, like you look back and you see all these pictures of guys, you know, photos in the locker room with, whether it's Crosby or McDavid, all these guys that superstars in the league, and one day, I think they'll appreciate it, right? It's a cool opportunity that they've never seen any place in my country. So that's going to be a special thing for us, something that, like I said, not many kids get to say and play hockey, so that kind of keeps you going, keeps you motivated."
Throughout his career, Pietrangelo has been praised as a teammate and a leader as much as he has for his play on the ice. He was fuelled by proving to everyone that he was worth the fourth overall pick in the 2008 NHL draft, and now, in the later stages of his career, he's fuelled by making his four children proud.
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