An anonymous restaurant patron is being hailed for causing a ripple effect of kindness after he paid for a hockey team’s dinner tab earlier this week.
The Barracudas are a midget team for the Dartmouth Whalers Minor Hockey Association. Every year at the end of the season, the youngsters raise money for a celebratory dinner and give the rest of the funds to charity.
This year, they planned on donating their excess charity money to a fundraiser that was created for the Humboldt Broncos.
The Broncos hockey team had been traveling through Saskatchewan on their way to a game last Friday when their bus collided with a transport truck. As of yesterday, almost $7 million had been raised for the survivors and the crash victims’ families.
So when the Barracudas team asked for the check after their dinner on Sunday night, they were stunned to hear from the server that a random man in the restaurant had picked up their $390 tab.
Todd Carruthers, the head coach for the team, told CBC: “A regular had noticed that we were a hockey crowd of kids and we were well-behaved and he took it upon himself to leave his credit card to pay.”
When Carruthers told the youngsters about the gesture – which he described as a “ray of sunshine” – they were overwhelmed with gratitude.
“All the kids were just, you know, gaping open mouth, smile on their face, they couldn’t believe it. I had to explain it to them two or three times what was going on.”
Thanks to the man’s act of kindness, the Barracudas were able to donate $460 to the fundraiser for the Humboldt survivors.
Kenzi Donnelly, the daughter of the server who waited on the hockey team, made a Twitter post about the exchange. Since publishing the story, it has been retweeted by thousands of people, including international Olympians and former NHL players.
“In the face of such tragedy, I think it really just showed people how good people can be, especially in the face of such awful circumstances,” she said.