When Brock Boeser stands on the stage inside BB&T Center in South Florida on Friday night … when he slips on the hat and jersey of the NHL team that drafts him in the first round … it’ll be affirmation of what he has accomplished through more hardship than a teenager should have to endure.
“It’ll definitely be an emotional one,†said Boeser, an 18-year-old from Burnsville.
He’ll think of his father, Duke, who not only battles daily through Parkinson’s disease but nearly died in a car accident when Brock was a high school freshman. And he’ll think about the car crash involving a circle of four close friends that rocked his community last August — an accident that killed Ty Alyea, a baseball teammate, and critically injured and altered the life of Cole Borchardt, a hockey linemate.
And he’ll think about “G-pa,†his grandfather, Bob, who died hours before Brock played a game for Waterloo of the United States Hockey League in October.
“Brock grabbed me one night last fall in the parking lot outside of Waterloo and said, ‘Mom, it’s just been so hard,’ †Laurie Boeser said. “I said, ‘Honey, unfortunately, we don’t have control of what life dictates. It can be not fun at times, and there’s going to be the good and the bad.’