Carter Hart Meets With Critically Ill Child

I'm sure many have heard Carter tell the story of how he and Connor formed their bond on more than one occasion, but seeing Connor with the jersey prompted Hart to go to the Flyers equipment team and request to permanently keep the number because he didn't want to force the boys parents to put out more money for another jersey with the corrected number once he officially made the team.

Let's fast forward quite a few years.

On Sunday, January 8, 2023, after a 6-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, the media requested to speak with Hart about his less than stellar performance. It was reported he walked into the locker room while the media was in the middle of interviewing forward Morgan Frost, waited "less than 10 seconds" and before the media could totally finish with Frost and completely shift their attention to Hart, he left the locker room. They were informed by the PR staff he would not be returning to speak with the media.

On the surface, it appears like Hart was just avoiding speaking with the media, but dig a bit deeper there could be a much clearer, and a bit of a brighter explanation for why he didn't stick around to speak with the media.

After the game, and "walking out" on the media, Hart went to meet with a 7-year-old fan. The little boy, Carter Gettler, has been a fan of Hart's for the last couple of years. The little boy has been battling Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis(LCH) for (roughly) the last year.

Back during the 2021 season, Hart invited the boy and his family to two different Flyers games, but due to Covid, and the boy's illness putting him in the "at risk" group that Covid could really harm, they never had the opportunity to formally meet up after a game.

That is, until Sunday night.

It's obvious Carter loves to make kids feel "seen" by their hero, as evidenced by both of the above stories, but it would seem the media never reported on this story of Carter meeting Carter from Sunday night. They pointed out he left before speaking with the media, but never explained anything further even though the info was public and quite easy to find. Hart himself even posted about the meet up on his Instagram story the next day.

The reason the media would ignore this is most likely because this story is not a story that would fit the narrative they were attempting to spin on that particular night after a poor performance.

There's absolutely no doubt Hart was frustrated after the loss to the Maple Leafs because he didn't play great game. There's also a decent chance he knew exactly what the media was going to ask. Mainly because they ask a lot of the same questions in a "poor play" situation, so it would be easy to say forget this and not do it, but Hart has been dealing with the media in some regard since he was 17 or 18 years old, and has never just "walked out" on doing any interviews because he was frustrated or felt like it. So why, after dealing with the media for 6 or 7 years now, and at 24-years-old, would he start now? It just doesn't seem to make much sense.

The meeting between Carter and the boy and his family was likely planned for weeks, if not months, but the NHL was forced to reschedule the March game against Buffalo to January after a winter storm in Western New York forced them to cancel games and shuffle things around on Buffalo's schedule. So instead of having the rest of the night to do whatever they wanted like they originally did, the Flyers needed to leave for Buffalo for the following night's rescheduled game, and Hart was likely on a bit of a time crunch to get to the meeting area to meet with the little boy and his family before leaving with the team for Buffalo. So it's a distinct possibility he made the conscious choice to leave the media hanging in order to not leave the little boy hanging.

The media has the opportunity to talk to Hart on an almost daily basis, the little boy was meeting him for the first time. I can honestly say if I were in Hart's shoes, my choice likely would have been the same. Putting a smile on a child's face is much more enjoyable than answering the same 50 questions for the one millionth time.