Talk about a friendly rivalry.
The hockey gods were smiling on a five-year-old Predators fan when the Oilers were in Nashville for a game on Thursday.
Christopher Smith, who lives just outside Nashville and has season tickets, went to the game with his fiancée and two young boys from their church.
Through the whole first period, one of the boys, five-year-old Zeb, kept looking at the program, at a picture of a gold Predators jersey.
“During the intermission, I asked him, ‘Is there anything cool that you saw in the program?'” Smith said. “And he’s flipping through there, trying to find that jersey picture. And he stops on it, points at it, and just looks at me and starts smiling.”
Minutes later, an Edmonton fan sitting two rows back came down and tapped Smith on the shoulder. He handed him a jersey.
“And he was like, ‘You can give that to that little guy, everybody needs their first jersey as a kid.'”
Smith said he was stunned. “I didn’t know what to say at the time. So I gave it to Zeb, and he put it on. And just the look on his face when he saw that gold sweater was just … words can’t really describe it.”
Brothers Dallas, left, and Derek Todd were at the Oilers/Predators game in Nashville on Thursday when Derek decided to buy a jersey for a young fan.
The Oilers fan who made the generous gift was Derek Todd from Red Deer, who was on vacation in Nashville with his brother, Dallas.
“We just came down for the Oilers game and to check out the sights,” Todd said.
Their plans did not include becoming heroes to a five-year-old boy, or creating an internet sensation. But that’s exactly what happened.
“He [Zeb] was just a couple rows up from us, and he kept eyeballing us every time we cheered for the Oilers,” said Todd. “He didn’t seem too happy that we were cheering against his team. But he seemed to have a lot of interest in those gold jerseys for the Predators.
“So during the second period, I went up, went to the store, grabbed a jersey that was around his size, then just dropped it off. Didn’t really expect anything like this to blow up on the internet.”
People learned of the act of kindness after Smith posted the story on the Oilers Facebook page.
Predators fan Christopher Smith posted on the story on the Oilers Facebook page. (Oilers/Facebook)
Smith said he didn’t think to ask the Todd brothers for their names, but he did buy them a beer.
“I got ’em two Molson,” he said. “I figured since they’re from Canada, they probably drink Molson.”
Smith and Todd have since connected over the internet. And it seems that gift of an expensive jersey could pay off in more than a couple of beers.
“We’ve got season tickets that we were sitting in,” said Smith. “So I told them, for any Edmonton game for life, if they want to come back to Nashville, they’ve got tickets for that, for sure.
“To make a little boy a hockey fan for life with a jersey like that is something special. It really is.”
Todd said he plans to take Smith up on his offer.
“We’ll definitely be back down here,” he said. “It’s been amazing so far.”