Nov 2, 2022
It’s 6 p.m. on the Saturday before Halloween, and the Iowa Wild are a couple hours removed from their first win of the season over the Manitoba Moose, a 5-2 triumph in Winnipeg. 600 miles away from the Canada Life Centre, one of their biggest fans, Ethan Kouri, is looking for a win of his own as he plans out his week.
Considering what Ethan has battled through in the last two years, the energy he emits defies expectations. He’s excited to share his story ahead of Hockey Fights Cancer Night on Friday at Wells Fargo Arena, where he and his family will be recognized ahead of puck drop.
As he recalls memories of the early years of Iowa Wild hockey, the phone rings.
“Do you mind if I get this?” Ethan asks. “It’s the hospital, I should probably answer it.”
A 10 YEAR SEASON TICKET HOLDER
Ethan and his brother, Connor, grew up in Des Moines and attended East High School. Like many Iowans, they didn’t know much about hockey when the Iowa Wild dropped the puck on their inaugural season in 2013. Most of what they knew about the sport came from video games.
“My mom figured it would be something me and my brother would enjoy and bond over,” he says. “We started at the very beginning in Section 102.”
The Kouri family never turned back, attending countless games over the next several years. As the brothers started families of their own, they attended fewer games but still always bought season ticket packages. Every year, they returned to Section 102, where they grew an extended family of other Iowa Wild superfans.
“That’s how we met Ann and Ray,” remembers Ethan. “They sat across the tunnel from us in 102 and we’d always chirp the opposing players. Sometimes the other team would talk trash back. It’s a little more levelheaded now that we have kids, though.”
Ethan and his brother would go on to forge many friendships with other fans in the concourse and at team events. His relationship with Ann Breeding, however, turned out to be more meaningful than he could have imagined.
BATTLING CANCER
Ethan’s cancer diagnosis arrived two years ago. It was unexpected, like most diagnoses, particularly because he was only 30 years old.
“I got AML (Acute Milo Leukemia). It’s like a blood cancer. I needed a stem cell transplant because my blood cells were producing bad blood,” he explains.
The hospital didn’t have good matches for Ethan’s stem cell transplant, but he caught a break…
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