BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The draft usually represents the celebration of an important milestone on a young player's journey through the hockey world.
Wherever the path ends, however long hockey remains a vital part of a young man's life -- and, by extension, the life of his family, friends and mentors -- it will be a moment he remembers forever.
But occasionally the draft, and that moment when the player's name is called for the world to hear and an NHL jersey is draped over his shoulders for the first time, represents something much, much more.
For Pascal Laberge, hearing his name called by the Philadelphia Flyers early in the second round on Saturday was also a celebration of life, a chance to honor those who have died and, maybe more importantly, to celebrate the way a game can help heal and honor the survivors.
"It's amazing," said Laberge, a forward who played for the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League's Victoriaville Tigreslast season. "You play hockey since you're a young kid and your dream is to get drafted to the NHL one day. To live that with all my family here it's, it's an amazing feeling."
Later, while standing outside the Flyers' suite at the First Niagara Center in downtown Buffalo, Laberge's father, Luc, struggled to put into words the emotion of being able to turn and hug his son as his name was called, a moment he did not know if he would survive to see.
Last summer, shortly after Pascal Laberge's stepmother was diagnosed with cancer that would take her life in September, Luc gathered the family and told them that he too had been diagnosed with cancer, in this case prostate cancer. Pascal Laberge's mother also suffers from multiple sclerosis.
For a long time, there was little light in his life except his son's hockey, Luc Laberge said in an interview conducted with translation help of his new girlfriend, Caroline.
"It's tough to explain this stuff," the father said. "We dream of these [days], but when I'm sick and I lost my girlfriend, in my imagination it's not there. But now, after the clouds, the sun is there. Life continues. You have to move forward. If you're not moving forward, you stay on the floor and you don't grow up."
The elder Laberge was declared cancer-free after the surgery, and now his son has been rewarded for the kind of perseverance that most people -- let alone a teenage boy playing junior hockey away from home -- would struggle to summon under similar circumstance.
"That was really hard, you know," Pascal Laberge admitted. "At the beginning of the season, I didn't have a good start. It was a tough moment for our family. But after that my coach, Bruce Richardson, just told me, 'If you perform at hockey, your parents will feel good about it,' so I just started to play hockey good after that."
He finished with 68 points in 56 games -- good enough for the Flyers to take him 36th overall.
Luc Laberge is a truck driver from the Montreal area. He learned hockey from his father, a construction worker, and he passed on a love of the game to his three boys. In a recent piece Pascal Laberge penned for The Players' Tribune, he described how his grandfather helped build the local arena.
Luc Laberge recalled one of the first times Pascal was playing hockey as a boy, and how there was clearly something special about his connection to the game.
"I have a couple of flashes; he's beside the net and he's passionate," Luc Laberge said. "I saw him. He was different than the other kids on the ice."
Just as his story, with its emotion and loss, is different than most of the tales of the other young men who also made lifelong memories in Buffalo this weekend.
Other second-day draft news of note
What else caught my eye this weekend?