Erin Kane had the local youth hockey community’s support in her second battle with breast cancer. The Flyers stepped in, too.
The Flyers sent Kane on a spa day with a few players. They honored her ahead of Monday night's Hockey Fights Cancer game against the Golden Knights.
The first time Erin Kane was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016, her son, Dylan, was 3, and she didn’t know a thing about hockey.
He was hooked on the sport from the first moment he watched the Flyers on TV. Hockey was one of his first words. Kane tried to sign him up for ball hockey, but Dylan wouldn’t have it — he wanted the real thing.
“One day at HomeGoods, I found him a little NHL mini stick and net kit, and from that point on, he carried a tiny little stick around with him,” Kane told The Inquirer.
During her first cancer treatment, the Kanes lived in an apartment in Voorhees near the Flyers training facility, so Kane could drive her son to the rink during the day. She enrolled him in a learn-to-skate program. He’s been skating with the Flyers’ youth programs ever since.
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“My main goal was keeping Dylan’s life as normal as possible,” Kane said. “My biggest goal out of all of this is that when he looks back on his childhood, that it’s just childhood memories and not that his mom had cancer. Anything he had to do cancer-related with me — and he did have to do a lot because at the time, I was a stay-at-home mom and my family wasn’t local, so for appointments, he had to come with me. Anything we had to do that was hard, or blood work or lab work, I made sure that right afterward, him and I did a fun activity.”
When Kane was diagnosed with breast cancer for a second time in 2021, her son’s Flyers youth team became her biggest support system. Kane was connected with the Mena Singer Foundation, which helps children whose parents have cancer continue to play hockey. The foundation covered all of the costs associated with Dylan’s hockey so that Kane could focus on treatment and Dylan could continue to play.
Even during her treatments, Kane attended every practice and game, and her fellow hockey moms supported her when she needed it.
“If we were traveling, there was always a mom that would swoop in, whether it was to come sit with me in the hotel room with a cup of tea, or taking my son with their son so they could play, they were offering me that respite, but covering for me so that it didn’t look like I needed to take that break,” Kane said.
Two other mothers on Dylan’s team also had been diagnosed with breast cancer, so the team organized a “Paint the Rink” fundraiser for the Mena Singer Foundation at the Flyers Training Center to support a local cause close to their hearts. The foundation reached out to the Flyers to potentially get the women and their families to a game, and what they ultimately got was even better.
The Flyers invited Kane and other cancer survivors for a spa day with forwards Ryan Poehling, Noah Cates, and Morgan Frost. For Cates, who has seen four of his teammates struggle with cancer in the past, it was special to be able to meet a group of hockey moms, knowing how much they already sacrificed so their kids can play.
“They’ve been battling through so much,” Cates said. “Through the friends I played with, I’ve seen how long and impacting it can be and how it wears on you. To have a nice day like that, to treat themselves, because they’ve been grinding and going through a lot, was nice.”
The Flyers honored Kane as the AstraZeneca cancer honoree for Hockey Fights Cancer Night on Monday ahead of their matchup against the Vegas Golden Knights, but Kane almost didn’t accept. The idea of standing up to be honored in front of a full crowd at the Wells Fargo Center made her nervous. Cancer has impacted so many lives — why her?
But her experiences with breast cancer taught Kane just how precious her life is. She wants to take advantage of every moment.
“I think so often of moments that I would have missed out on seeing should my cancer treatment have not worked, and I think ahead to the future, the possibility of someday not being here to see them,” Kane said. “I think it’s incredible to embrace these opportunities that are given to you, even if they make you feel anxious, even if they make you feel overwhelmed, because you get to experience them. I’m here to experience them, and I’m here to experience them alongside my family and my friends and my hockey family.”