Light feet, heavy heart: The tragic story of a rising hockey star and two unfathomable losses

He’ll remember his older brother, Johnny, asking her for her blessing to marry his girlfriend and her responding by opening her eyes and saying yes. He got to see her 91-year-old parents, his grandparents, make it to her bedside after driving nine hours from their home in Sault Ste. Marie with her brother to see her just minutes before she faded away.

Those are some of the amazing and beautiful things Matthew Schaefer experienced in February over the final days with his mother, Jennifer.

Not long after that, Jennifer Schaefer died at the age of 56, the breast cancer that had originally been diagnosed in 2021 taking her exactly one week after she was in the stands at the Erie Insurance Arena watching her son play for the Erie Otters of the Ontario Hockey League and, in a cruel twist of irony, the same day the Otters held their Hockey Fights Cancer night.

And, suddenly, a young hockey star who had lived a charmed life for 16 years and never experienced anyone close to him dying was overcome with grief.

It was his second significant loss of a mother figure in just over two months.

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• Dec 31, 1969
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• Dec 31, 1969
• Comments

***

Before Schaefer steps on the ice for the semifinal game at the world under-18 hockey championship in Finland Saturday, he’ll say a little prayer. He’ll probably say one between periods, too, in Canada’s game against Sweden, which will decide whether they’ll play for a gold medal on Sunday against the winner of the USA-Slovakia semifinal. He’ll do as he’s done every game since Jennifer died, praying to his mom to let her know he hasn’t forgotten about her.

“I let her know that I miss her, I love her,” Schaefer said in a telephone interview from Finland. “Hopefully, she knows I still think about her. I think she knows because I told her when she was in the hospital that I was going to work as hard as I can for her and try to make her proud. I play every game for her and she knows that because I know she has a front-row seat right there for me.”

When he was growing up in the Riviera Ridge neighbourhood in Stoney Creek, Johnny Schaefer would look around and he wouldn’t see anyone else’s mother playing road hockey and mini sticks and basketball and soccer and badminton with their kids. But Jennifer was always out there with her two sons, even putting on the goalie pads and allowing Johnny and Matthew to take shots on her.

Johnny remembers how he and Matthew would take advantage of her “rubber arm,” saying she never really wanted to play goal, but all they’d have to do is ask a couple of times. And it worked. Johnny is nine-and-a-half years older than Matthew and played in the OHL and at Brock University, while Matthew became a minor hockey star with serious NHL potential.

“She was just so invested in us,” Johnny said. “We were very lucky kids.”

And when Jennifer wasn’t playing with her sons, she was driving them from rink to rink to chase their dreams. She attended all their games, usually wrapped in a blanket to keep her from getting too cold.

“We would be at one of Johnny’s minor hockey games,” said Todd Schaefer, Matthew’s father and Jennifer’s husband. “And she’d have one eye on the game, while playing mini-sticks with Matthew while he had a soother in his mouth.”

On the mantle in their home, right beside a picture of Jennifer, is a sign that reads: “My favourite hockey player calls me Mom.”

Jennifer cried every day in the summer of 2023 as she faced the prospect of her 15-year-old son leaving home. But then they met Emily Matson and Ryan Onderko, who would become Matthew’s billet parents in Erie. Their son had just left home to take a job with the U.S. Intelligence Service and they had a room in the basement.

“The whole month of August, she was crying, worrying about Matthew going away,” Todd said. “The day we met the billet family and left Matthew at that house was the only day she didn’t cry.

“It was amazing — until it wasn’t.”

Matthew’s billet mom Matson was a popular Erie news anchor. She and Matthew hit it off right away and before long they were trading playful barbs. Early in the season, the station where Matson was the anchor did a half-hour special previewing the Otters’ season, complete with a story about her being Matthew’s billet mom and her donning hockey equipment and getting out onto the ice to play with Matthew.

One Sunday night in December, she took her dogs for a walk then FaceTimed a friend, marvelling at how much her “future NHL star” was able to pack away before panning the phone to Matthew, his mouth covered in melted chocolate and whipping cream.

An hour later, Matson left her house again and was struck by a train. Her death was ruled a suicide.

Matson was a stepmother to Ryan’s two children and the two had previously lost a baby. That sometimes drove her to dark places, but nobody was able to conceive why she had taken her own life. In fact, later that next week, she was scheduled to have an interview for a position with a morning show. Matthew’s parents had been in town that weekend to see him play and they spoke to Matson just prior to leaving town.

“Nobody could understand, not her friends, not Ryan,” said Todd. “There were no signs. Nothing.”

So if the adults in her life couldn’t make sense of the tragedy, how could a 16-year-old kid be expected to make sense of it?

Seventy-two days later, Matthew received the call from his father to come home because his mother had taken a turn for the worse. A teammate drove him from Erie to the border, where his father picked him up and took him straight to the hospital.

After undergoing a double mastectomy and chemotherapy treatments following her diagnosis three years earlier, the outlook had looked positive for Jennifer. Even when the cancer returned in 2023, there was optimism that she could live for another three to five years. Todd remembers there was always another drug around the corner that would help her stay ahead of the cancer. But the cancer always caught up, and Jennifer’s condition worsened quickly.

Matthew knew something was seriously wrong when his mother couldn’t get out of bed to watch him play on Family Day in Brantford. She tried to watch the game online, but fell asleep. That had never happened before. Three days later, he received the call to come home and say goodbye.

“That was one of the worst things I’ve ever had to witness,” Matthew said. “You never want to see your mom like that.”

***

Showing why the Otters chose the defenceman with the first pick in the OHL draft in 2023 and why he’ll almost certainly be a high NHL pick in 2025, you would never know the native of Stoney Creek with the light feet is playing with a heavy heart.

“Hockey is the easy part,” Schaefer said. “I stayed home a little while after (Jennifer died), but if I had stayed home any longer, she would have been yelling down at me from heaven saying, ‘Get back on the ice!’”

Stan Butler has coached junior hockey for more than three decades and was an educator prior to that and he’s never seen a person so young go through the kind of tragedy Schaefer endured in such a short time. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s so occupied with hockey, but he has held up remarkably well. The month after Matson died and the month before Jennifer died, he was named one of the OHL’s academic players of the month.

“Everyone tells me what a special player Matthew is,” Butler said. “But he’s also such a special person. He has no ego. He reminds me a lot of Jason Spezza that way, a good person who comes to the rink every day and plays the game right and treats people right. His parents raised him well.”

The fact that Schaefer is even on Canada’s team for this tournament is a notable achievement.

Gavin McKenna is making headlines for his incredible scoring exploits as a 16-year-old for Canada, but Schaefer is drawing rave reviews as well. Not only was he chosen for the team as an underage player, he’s playing a regular shift, averaging just over 17 minutes a game and drawing time on both special teams.

In Canada’s four wins in group play, and its 4-0 quarterfinal over Latvia, Schaefer had been on the ice for only two even-strength goals against and was plus-seven with a goal and an assist. Last season, while playing under-16 hockey for the Halton Hurricanes, Schaefer captained Ontario to a gold medal in the Canada Winter Games, scoring the overtime goal in a 3-2 win over Saskatchewan in the championship game.

Next season will be Schaefer’s NHL draft year and the many teams that interview him will ask him a question they pose to every young prospect: What kind of adversity have you faced in your life and how did you overcome it?

Scouts have remarked that most kids struggle with that question, largely because they haven’t really had to deal with any setbacks. That will not be a problem with Schaefer.

Meanwhile, he’ll pray to his mother before every game.

Before Jennifer died, Matthew would call her during the day for advice on which turtleneck and suit to wear to the game that night. Todd told Matthew he’d be happy to be the one to provide the fashion advice now.

“I tell him, ‘Dad, I’m good,’” Matthew said. “‘Mom’s got me.’”