What started with a professional hockey game ended up with two distant cousins having an impromptu family reunion last week. Morinville’s Danny Getzlaf had known about his long lost relation, Anaheim Ducks’ captain Ryan Getzlaf, for years but the meeting only occurred through a series of chances and the magic of social media.
“The funny thing is that, years ago when I was working at Old Dutch Foods, somebody came to me with an article and they said, ‘Is this a relation of yours? Look at all the goals and points he’s getting, right?’ I’d never heard of him,” Danny Getzlaf said.
Back then, Ryan Getzlaf was playing for the Calgary Hitmen and he had just gained a new fan, even though he didn’t know it at the time. Over the years, Danny had assumed that there was probably some connection so his sister started working on a family tree and learned that there were two brothers who came from Russia, settling in southern Saskatchewan.
“Ryan’s off of one of those brothers and I’m off of the other branch. I don’t even know if you’d call it a third cousin. I noticed on the picture, somebody pointed out, ‘Hey look, you guys have the dimple on the same side of your cheek.’”
Getzlaf, as it turns out, is not a common surname by any stretch. There seem to be more of them in Calgary. Danny had heard of Chris Getzlaf, who is Ryan's older brother and played in the CFL.
Fast forward to the NHL playoffs last year. Danny went to Rogers Place to watch the home team battle it out with the Ducks and he wore the visiting team’s jersey with ‘GETZLAF’ emblazoned across the back. That blinding white shirt stood out in an arena filled with Oilers orange. A photo of him appeared on the Ducks’ Twitter page with the message ‘we see you dude’.
“Anaheim tweeted ‘oh we see you.’ I was the only Duck in this sea of Oilers jerseys,” he said about the photo that went viral and later was mostly forgotten about except by some hockey insiders. Early this January, he was back in his California wear at an Edmonton home game. A media rep from the NHL asked to take his picture.
“She came back about 15 minutes later and said, ‘My boss said that you were the guy in that iconic picture.’ That’s how it took off.” Before he and Linda would return for the March 25 game, they received a message from the Ducks about their interest in writing a story about him for their website.
To thank him for that opportunity, they co-ordinated the meetup just outside the visitors’ dressing room. There wasn’t much time for it, but it was enough for the two to get off to a good start.
“We said something about the relation. I said, ‘Hey, we have lots of other time to talk about that.’ We just said a few jokes. It’s hard to feel at ease when there’s cameras and everything on you at the same time.”
The entire experience gave Danny Getzlaf a great relief from what he has otherwise been struggling with over the last several months. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, leading him to experience a huge lack of energy. Though he swears that he is still an Oilers fan, all he needs to perk up now is the thought of how this all started with him wearing that bright white jersey with the family name on it.
“I was really the only one in the whole place, it seemed like. The funny thing is I look at that picture now I still laugh at it. It is so funny. Since I have this disease, I look at that picture now at all of those people not hating me … they’re supporting me.”
