Eli Palfreyman turned 20 just this summer, on July 2. Several weeks later, he was named captain of the Ayr Centennials. On August 30, he brought his team to the ice in a pre-season tournament game. Eli was proud, handsome, smiling, vibrant. He never came home. Eli collapsed and passed away in the locker room during the first intermission of the game. His cause of death is unknown.

Eli was one of Cambridge’s sons, coming up with the Cambridge Hawks before forging on with the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League, playing for the Kitchener Dutchmen and Pelham Panthers and joining the Ayr Centennials last year.

With friends and former teammates throughout the Ontario hockey diaspora, Eli’s influence and loss is felt everywhere. Known to his friends as Ziggy, Zigs, even Fry Man, Eli is remembered as a bright spark, a constant source of energy and laughter, the guy who could always be relied on to get your mood up if you were feeling own.

Brett, Eli’s dad, knows that his son was a leader, a person that people looked up to, everyone’s best friend.

Losing Eli has hit the hockey community hard. I know that in Eli and his mom, Tammy, and his dad and his sister, Ella, families across Ontario see themselves. They see their own son, their brother, their friend, their teammate. In grief, they are united.

A favourite author of mine, Terry Pratchett, wrote that no one is truly dead until the ripples they cause in the world finally die away. In that case, from what I have heard of Eli, he will live forever. Rest in peace, number 17.