BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Even in those final days in hospice care, when Duke Boeser couldn’t eat, couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, could barely breathe and was in so much pain he took a swing at his son when he tried to help sit him up, Brock Boeser figured this would be the latest adversity his strong, courageous father would overcome.

Advertisement

After all, since Brock was 13, anything and everything was launched in his dad’s direction, and Duke always, always, always triumphed in the end.

In 2010, Duke was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. In 2012, his car was T-boned when another car ran a red light a half mile from his Burnsville, Minn., home. Duke’s seatbelt snapped, and he was thrown into the passenger-side door, suffering a traumatic brain injury, several broken bones and a lacerated spleen. In 2017, Duke was diagnosed with lung cancer, something he’d beat before cancer returned and he’d have to fight some more. In 2019, Duke had a pulmonary embolism that caused his heart to stop and turned him blue.

Yet, after 15 minutes of chest compressions, Duke was brought back to life. They’d lose Duke’s pulse again in the ICU, but once more he was revived. He ended up hospitalized for months, spending parts of it with a feeding tube directly into his stomach and a breathing tube directly into his windpipe.

“I remember when he got cancer for the second time, I was with him in the car,” Brock Boeser, 25, says as he sips his iced coffee and plays with a yellow band around his right wrist that reads “Never Stop Fighting” on one side and “Dukey Strong” on the other. “He cried and said, ‘Why does this keep happening to me?’ He could never catch a break. That’s something that’s hard not to think about. Why did he have to go through so much? No one knows, and that’s in God’s hands.”

Yet, after that second cancer diagnosis, after being deemed clinically dead after that blood clot traveled to his heart, Duke always lived on.

For three more seasons Duke got to watch his son score goals for the Vancouver Canucks, so Brock wondered why this time, as dementia and Parkinson’s overtook his dad’s mind and body, would be any different.

That was until Thursday, May 26, the day before his dad died at the age of 61.

Advertisement

Brock was alone in his parents’ bedroom with his dad. Duke was sleeping, his breathing strained.

Brock put on some music. Tim McGraw’s “My Old Friend” came out of the speakers. It was a song he always listened to with his dad while growing up.

Brock turned up the volume, then sat on the chair next to his dad’s bed.

My old friend, this song’s for you
‘Cause a few simple verses was the least that I could do
To tell the world that you were here
‘Cause the love and the laughter
Will live on long after
All of the sadness and the tears
We’ll meet again
My old friend … goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye

“My dad squeezed my hand and kind of smirked at me,” Brock says. “He just kept squeezing my hand as the song played.”

“Yeah,” he continues, his voice shaking, “he knew it was time to go. You wanted to just stop time because I knew that he knew it was time to say goodbye.

“During the tough days and nights over the last few months, my dad squeezing my hand is something special I keep thinking about.”

The next morning, when Brock’s mom, Laurie, went into the bedroom to change the clothes of her husband of just shy of 28 years, she heard his final breath.

Brock woke up the morning of May 27 to his mom’s call that his father had passed away.

“I went over there right away,” Brock says. “I know a lot of people get this feeling when they see people go through so much pain and suffering and then they die and they look so at peace, but while I was sad, I had the weirdest feeling through my body.

“I looked at my dad, and he’s finally not in pain anymore.”

Brock and Duke Boeser were kindred spirits.

Brock is living his dream, “and my dream was his dream,” Brock says.

Plus, they looked alike and acted alike.

“That even-keel temperament, it takes a lot to get them mad,” Laurie says. “Just the kindness, the fun-loving-ness. I’m more high-strung and moody, and Duke’s just a nice guy. That’s what I always called Duke: just a really nice guy.

Advertisement

“And with Brock, there was so much for Duke to be in awe of and proud of. Brock and him, they definitely admired one another.”

For as long as Brock can remember, his dad, a former Burnsville High hockey player like himself, was always in the stands.

“He was my biggest fan, for sure,” Brock says. “Always grew up watching hockey together. I’d sit on his lap watching Wild games. He was always amazed at some of the stuff I could do; it was pretty funny. He was a laid-back hockey dad. He watched all my high school games from the glass. Never really said anything other than to shoot top right corner or just to shoot more. He never got mad at me … ever.”

At squirt, peewee, midget and bantam tournaments, there was Duke. At high school and junior games, there was Duke. When Brock won the national championship with the University of North Dakota in 2016, Duke was there in Tampa, Fla., watching alongside his wife. When Brock made his NHL debut for the Canucks against his hometown Minnesota Wild and scored the game-winning goal, it came not long after then-coach Willie Desjardins gave Duke, with Laurie at his side helping out, the honor of announcing the starting lineup inside the Canucks’ locker room.

After announcing the Sedin twins at left wing and center, Duke said, “Starting at right wing, I can’t believe it … Brock Boeser.”

He then reminded his son that the number he was assigned, No. 6, was also the number he wore for three years in high school.

"And starting on right wing, I can't believe it, Brock Boeser!"

Duke and Laurie Boeser read the #Canucks starting line-up Saturday.

— Vancouver #Canucks (@Canucks) March 26, 2017

Duke was often behind the bench when his son played in the summer Da Beauty League in Edina, Minn., and of course, he was radiating with pride back in Tampa in 2018 when his son had an All-Star Weekend for the ages.

Advertisement

Brock won the accuracy shooting contest in the skills competition, then became the second rookie in NHL history and first since Mario Lemieux in 1985 to be named the All-Star Game MVP, scoring the winning goal for the Atlantic in the semifinal to beat the Central then slamming home another goal and an assist in the final.

For his efforts, Brock collected more than a half-million dollars in bonus money and a Honda hybrid he gave to his now-27-year-old sister, Jessica.

Brock Boeser’s week

$212,500 for ASG invite
$212,500 for ASG MVP
$100K for winning ASG
$25K for winning accuracy
$10K all ASG players get
A new 🚘
Adopted a 🐕

“He’s hitting his bonuses pretty well.” — Duke Boeser
“I am so thrilled for him.” — a tear-filled Laurie Boeser

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) January 29, 2018

Duke used to always say, “This isn’t real. This isn’t real,” and he must have been feeling it in that moment.

“I’m living through Brock from afar,” he once said proudly, in large part because he was so self-deprecating about his own hockey prowess during his younger days. He’d often crack that he was the fastest skater on the ice before setting up the punchline: The problem was, “I couldn’t turn or stop.”

After Brock became an NHLer, his parents would stay up late and watch him from the comfort of their couch. Laurie would often send her son videos of Duke reacting joyously to his goals. Laurie is the worried, stressed-out parent during games and will text Brock afterward. Duke was always available for a phone call after a game — or anytime.

The 2021-22 season was a torturous one for Brock, though.

He’d FaceTime with his dad often and could see how fast he was deteriorating. His mom didn’t feel comfortable leaving Duke’s side, so she never visited Vancouver. When Brock returned to Minnesota over the league’s winter holiday break, his dad was really struggling to walk. When he returned for the Olympic break, it was much worse.

Advertisement

“He was out of it a lot more. The dementia just took over,” Brock says. “My mom tried to put him in (an assisted care facility) after I left, but he fell and hit his head, so we brought him back home. He just slowly started going downhill to the point where he couldn’t really walk and talk. It wasn’t easy.”

All the while, Brock tried to keep his focus on hockey. But he admits he was completely distracted almost 2,000 miles away.

“It was pretty cruel to watch from afar,” Brock says. “I don’t think anyone really understands unless you’ve been through it how hard it is to go through during a season, especially when you leave and he is fine and you come home and he is a little worse and then you come home and he can barely walk. And then you’re worried that your mom’s taking care of him the whole time. My brother (Paul’s) here (in Minnesota) and my sister is there, but it’s pretty hard when my mom’s the main caregiver and he’s in pain and she has to get him in and out of bed and all that stuff.

“I was mentally tired at certain points during the season because I was so stressed out. It was hard for me to have that passion each and every night.”

Adds Laurie, “It was so hard on him. You’re living your life, you’re doing your job, but what was going on here weighs on you every single day. I’m sure he felt like he should be home, he should be helping — just the things you do when you care about a loved one. And Brock’s nature is to be helpful.”

The last game Duke got to watch his son play in person came March 24. Brock assisted on a first-period goal by Bo Horvat in an eventual overtime loss to the Wild. But the game was hard for Duke, who sat in a wheelchair inside a suite. So when the Canucks returned to Minnesota a month later, Laurie decided not to bring Duke to the game.

But Brock’s agent, Ben Hankinson, arranged for the Boesers to come to the morning skate.

Advertisement

Toward the end of the skate, Brock, wearing a green practice jersey, tried to get his dad’s attention by flipping pucks to him. Duke didn’t react, and as Brock stood on the ice staring longingly up into the stands, the reality of the situation struck him.

It was a gripping scene to watch because it was obvious exactly what was going through Brock’s head.

Brock Boeser shooting a puck to his dad, Duke ❤️

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) April 21, 2022

“He knew it was the last time his dad would see him on the ice,” Laurie says. “He said, ‘Mom, you have to bring him to the game because I know it’s the last time.’ I said, ‘We just can’t. It’s not fair to Dad.’ The game the month before was too much for him. Too much noise. It just was too chaotic.”

After the morning skate, Laurie brought her husband down to the locker room to meet coach Bruce Boudreau. Laurie says from Day 1 of Boudreau taking over as Canucks coach that winter, he’d told her son, “Whatever you need, just tell us. If you need a day off, if you need to go to Minnesota for a few days, just tell us.”

In fact, the month before, the Canucks let Brock stay in Minnesota an extra day so he could spend time with his dad before flying commercially to meet up with the team in Dallas.

After meeting Boudreau, Duke reunited with some of his son’s teammates who knew him well, like Elias Pettersson.

“Petey didn’t really know how bad it was,” Brock says. “Petey saw him after the morning skate, and it hit him pretty hard. He loved my dad.”

Brock pauses, then stares down at the table in front of him.

“Yeah, I just don’t get it,” Brock says. “It’s unfair. He had been through so much. He went through hell. He was thrown everything at him that a person could be thrown. There’s so many stories of people getting cancer, but there’s not too many stories of a guy getting Parkinson’s, then getting in a terrible car accident, then getting cancer, beating cancer, getting cancer again and then a heart embolism, then getting dementia from his Parkinson’s.

Advertisement

“Yet he trucked along for so many years. Never complained. Every time we thought he was done, he’d come back. We just wanted more time with him, and I’m thankful we got a couple extra years.”

Brock returned to Minnesota in early May and got to spend Duke’s final few weeks with him.

“It’s almost like he waited for me to get home,” he says.

If you know anything about Brock’s career, it feels like he’s always had something weighing over his head. There were the years of watching his dad’s health problems, something that began 12 years ago, the same year Duke’s parents — Brock’s grandparents — died nine months apart. And there’s the guilt he still carries for not being in Minnesota when four of his closest friends were in a devastating SUV accident in August 2014 after a day of cliff diving.

Brock was in Slovakia captaining the U.S. under-18 team at the Ivan Hlinka tournament when he got word his friends Matthew Berger, Tylan Procko, Ty Alyea and Cole Borchardt were in the rollover crash that ejected Alyea and Borchardt.

Alyea, Brock’s old baseball teammate, would die. Borchardt, Brock’s old high school hockey linemate, was severely injured and has permanent health problems stemming from the accident.

Brock still regrets not attending Alyea’s funeral.

“I didn’t watch the funeral. They videotaped it. But I couldn’t watch for four or five years,” he says. “Finally, two years ago, I watched it for the first time and it brought everything back. I still wish I came back and was with my friends. Rather than being away … I should have come home.”

Borchardt, Procko and Berger remain three of Brock’s best friends. Borchardt, who now lives in Michigan, is walking much better and recently came to Brock’s home in Prior Lake, Minn., to play some croquet and volleyball.

Brock still writes his friends’ initials and numbers on his sticks to keep them close during hockey season.

Advertisement

“They’re my best buddies,” he says.

And he plans to do something to honor his dad this season, too.

But Brock is hoping to go into this season finally with a clear mind. He has been working with a life coach to help him deal with the loss of his father and his friends’ accident, which is something he says he “never really dealt with.”

“I’m really excited to be able to be straightforward, clear-minded, for each and every game, because last year was hard,” Brock says. “I’m really going to try to focus on the game at hand and help our team win and me producing. I scored 23 goals last year in a pretty distracted, down year. So I’m really happy and excited to get back and show what I can do.”

That’s what Boudreau anticipates for a player who has scored 121 goals and 256 points in 324 career games, saying, “There’s been a lot going on in that young man’s life. I can’t wait to see him this year. … Hopefully he’s ready to go and in great shape, and I think he wants to prove to the world that he is a lot better hockey player than maybe people gave him credit for last year.”

Last week, Brock took his mom to a Michael Buble concert at Xcel Energy Center and got backstage with the Canucks superfan. After the show, Brock took off for the long drive to Vancouver along with his two dogs, Coolie and Milo. He arrived this past weekend.

Laurie is in the process of selling her home and plans to move into Brock’s home with Jessica and their two dogs. In the spring, she plans to buy a townhouse and really begin life without Duke at her side.

“There are good days and bad days,” Laurie says. “I feel like Duke had a fulfilled life in many aspects. He got to experience a lot of wonderful things, but I still feel like there was a lot of life for him to have lived. It’s just accepting that’s how it is now. He’s in a better place, I hope, and we all need to continue the journey without him.

Advertisement

“For all of us, it’s just about making the adjustment to life without him around on Earth. But I know his spirit lives on.”

Laurie plans to travel a lot to Vancouver this season to spend time with her son. It still eats her up that during Brock’s struggles last season, both on the ice and emotionally, she couldn’t visit to help him to “just be a parent.”

He hardly blames her. In fact, he’s awed by his mom’s strength after years of caring for his dad.

“I think God gives his toughest battles to the toughest soldiers,” Brock says. “I don’t know how she did it for so long. But it just shows you her love for my dad and how much she cared for him.”

Laurie can’t wait to watch her son play hockey this season, knowing Duke will be watching over the pride of his life.

“I’m happy that Brock has the opportunity to go on with memories of his dad, knowing he’s watching from above, and he can just go play without anything on his back,” Laurie says. “No burden, not a heaviness. Just go play his game.”

The life Duke Boeser had to live at the end is not a life anybody should have to endure. Brock thinks about that often.

“There’s the times you’re laying in bed and it hurts a lot,” he says. “But when I really get worked up and feel really bad and sad and tears come to my eyes, I try to think of how much pain he was in. No one should go through what he went through.

“So … I send a prayer up and then that usually makes me feel a little better. I think about him squeezing my hand. And then … I go to sleep.”

(Top photo courtesy of Brock Boeser)