NHLPA/Heart and Stroke Beard-a-thon

With the NHL playoffs starting tonight, many players are set to support a great cause by growing out their playoff beards – and they want hockey fans to join them!

The NHLPA and the Heart and Stroke Foundation have joined together to launch the NHLPA Beard-a-thon, an exciting charitable initiative that will help the Foundation in purchasing Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) for local hockey arenas and communities across Canada.

Many NHL players have committed to ‘grow hair because they care’ including Dan Hamhuis, Ryan Kesler, Mason Raymond, and Jeff Tambellini.

Many other NHLPA members such as Scott Hartnell, Adrian Aucoin, Patrice Bergeron, Dan Cleary, Mathieu Darche, Brooks Laich, Jamal Mayers, Martin St. Louis Max Talbot and Shea Weber are involved in this exciting new initiative.

Hockey fans can log-on to www.beardathon.ca or www.nhlpa.com for more information on the NHLPA Beard-a-thon.

Once on the website, fans will be able to support the cause in three different ways:

1) growing their own beard as they seek donations from friends and family;
2) pledging a friend, family member or anyone else who is growing a beard; or
3) by making a pledge to their favourite beard-growing NHL player participating in the playoffs.

This is a fun initiative for a great cause and it has already raised more than $18,000 to purchase AEDs for arenas and communities across Canada and the playoffs haven’t even started!

We encourage you to check out www.beardathon.ca to learn more about the program and please help us spread the word about this initiative.