One man’s journey from fair-weather fan to forging a family of Caniacs that bond over their shared love of ice hockey
Writing and photography by Jedidiah Gant

As a kid, I was a devoted sports fan, following basketball, baseball, and football, tracking statistics in the newspaper. I played tennis and soccer in my teens and collected sports cards obsessively.

My interest in sports waned while in college at UNCC, replaced by the demands of architecture school. While living in London after college, I rediscovered sports through the English Premier League. Surrounded by soccer culture, I immersed myself in the league’s history, players, and teams, becoming an Arsenal supporter along the way.

But one sport that was missing in my encyclopedic investigations was hockey. I knew little about the sport other than names of a few of the famous players and a basic understanding of the rules. I’d never played ice hockey. The sport was lost on me. 

I moved to Raleigh in 2005, and one year later — during the Carolina Hurricanes’ historic championship run — I started to feel the hockey buzz. 

Despite limited knowledge of the sport, I watched along with friends as the Canes battled their way through the playoffs and won their first Stanley Cup in seven games. We ended up on Glenwood South for the post-win celebration, caught up in the whirlwind of excitement. There was a collective effervescence present that evening that made me proud of our city’s dedication to hockey, a sport not typically associated with the South. 

Earlier that same week, on June 15 between Games 5 and 6, I met a woman named Stacy at a concert downtown. Two years later, we were married. In retrospect, it was quite an exciting week of wins all around. 

Over the years, Stacy and I have been fairweather Canes fans, occasionally attending and watching games with family and friends, both regular season and playoffs. Hockey was fun to watch, but we weren’t fully invested.

That said, two games were standouts: In 2018, our son Oliver, a cancer survivor, was invited to watch a game in the Staal Family Foundation box with other kids from St. Baldrick, a charity dedicated to funding childhood cancer research. That has always been a special memory for our family. Last season, we attended a game on Brent Burns’ 40th birthday and they gave fake beards to everyone in the crowd. Our daughter, Eleanor, was particularly amused by this. (And we have those two beards in our costume box for future use.)

But this year, something clicked. From the beginning of the season, I felt a magnetic pull towards the team and the story of their Stanley Cup anniversary. I became emotionally invested in their success in a way I never had before. I found a way to watch nearly every game; be it in the arena, at a bar, in our living room or on my phone. (I distinctly remember stopping on the streets of Gainesville, FL to watch the overtime shootout win against the Philadelphia Flyers while on a family trip.) I attended the Grateful Dead themed night and the 20th Anniversary Cup Celebration game, where the Canes beat the Blue Jackets 4-1 and the 2006 cup-winning players were back on the ice. 

I ended up going to about 15 games this season, many of them with my family — either with the kids individually, my wife or as a family of four — and we developed a hockey rapport together. We’d been to NC Courage and Durham Bulls games together, but ice hockey was new to us all at the same time. 

The more I watched, the more I began to understand the game and the culture — and the more I wanted to learn. I watched YouTube videos to comprehend the rules. I memorized the Canes players’ names, numbers and positions. I subscribed to podcasts and Reddit boards; I swapped stats, memes and game plans in a text thread with close friends. 

We set up a projector and a large screen to watch the US Hockey team bring home the gold during the Olympics in February, and it stayed up. Hurricanes jerseys became Christmas and birthday gifts. I started developing superstitions (along with many other Canes fans): This jersey. Those socks. This venue. That seat. 

The playoffs took our newfound fandom to an even higher level. Stacy and I attended the first home playoff game, which kicked off with the infamous Jordan Staal and Brady Tkachuk faceoff fight. The game was exhilarating and the arena was deafening. We hosted small watch parties at home, went to see games at Players Retreat and in the Rialto Theater. We streamed games while on vacation. 

We tailgated and streamed the clinching Eastern Conference Finals game in the back of a pickup truck in the Lenovo Center lot. We attended a Moore Square watch party and miraculously, managed to get tickets to all three Watch Parties for the Stanley Cup Finals inside the Lenovo Center. The excitement was infectious. We were riding the storm surge. 

After watching Staal hoist the trophy on the Jumbotron inside the Lenovo Center with our kids by our side, Stacy and I laid in bed, scrolling through video after video of Canes players and fans celebrating the cup win across the city. That collective effervescence was back in Raleigh.

Feeling tired, I checked my phone: 12:15am, June 15. Twenty years since the night that we’d first met, the week we celebrated the last Stanley Cup win for the Canes.

A lot has changed for us, and for Raleigh, in that time. But many things have remained the same. Stacy’s still by my side, but we’ve added two to the mix. The city’s still divided by college rivalries, but the Canes are everyone’s team. Most importantly, they’re our family’s team. Keep an eye out for these four new Caniacs — and now season ticket holders — in the stands come late September. 

Let’s Go Canes!

This article originally appeared in the June 2026 issue of WALTER magazine.