Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Throughout all of the ups and downs that have come with Matt Strome’s hockey career, his grandmother has been there through it all.
Strome won an Ontario Hockey League championship with Hamilton in 2018 and had a chance to compete for the Memorial Cup. The following season, his last one in the OHL, he earned the Bulldogs’ captaincy.
Then came the uneven road of trying to make it in pro hockey. A 2017 fourth-round pick by the Philadelphia Flyers, Strome spent his first three pro seasons going between the AHL and ECHL. In 2022 he made the short jump over to the Hershey Bears and found his home. That first season with the Bears brought a Calder Cup championship, though Strome was limited to 34 regular-season games and did not dress during the Calder Cup Playoffs. But last season he really broke through, registering a career-high 20 points (seven goals, 13 assists) and finding his niche as a diligent, workmanlike presence on an excellent checking line for head coach Todd Nelson.
This time Strome did get his playoff chance, getting into 15 of 20 games. And it was that final game that brought the biggest moment in Strome’s pro career, that moment that he got loose inside the opposing blue line in overtime of Game 6 of the Calder Cup Finals and scored to win the Bears their second consecutive Calder Cup.
That his grandmother, Inez Strome, could see those moments makes Hockey Fights Cancer initiatives this month that much more personal for Matt and his family. When he was still young, Inez – whom Matt says was “was pretty much like a third parent” growing up – was diagnosed with colon cancer. Now, at 88, she is fighting breast cancer.
“She’s the toughest woman I know,” he said. “She battles through it. It just really puts life in perspective. I was five years old, and I had no idea she was going through it. She’s just always so happy, and she always just puts a smile on my face.”
Some of those early memories are pretty fuzzy. Strome relied on his parents, Chris and Trish, to try to process that news.
“One of the biggest things with my family is that we’re always there to support each other whether it’s something to do with hockey or something to do with life,” said Matt, whose older brothers Ryan and Dylan are both in the NHL. “I know I can turn to so many different people in my family with so many different life experiences. That’s really helped me in my career – if I’m having a down day or something’s not going right, there’s so much perspective in life that everybody goes through.”
Inez is still there to see her grandsons pursue their hockey ambitions. She sees all of their moments, in fact. And she is around to see her grandchildren and now her great-grandchildren as well. She’ll also offer her own player evaluations.
“She’ll text us after every game saying what she thinks we did well and what things we need to improve on,” Matt said. “Whenever me or my brothers talk to her, we always love it.”
Most of us are not able to understand the smallest nuances and deepest details of something as complex as cancer. It brings about countless questions to answer and mysteries to unravel for the doctors, nurses and researchers who have dedicated their professional lives to doing so. But what we can do is listen to the patients – along with the families and friends of those patients – who are trying to manage and get through the day-to-day trials that cancer inflicts. That is a lesson that Strome took from his grandmother at a young age. He even saw how she often put aside her own pain and difficulties to help or listen to someone else’s problems.
“Just to lend an ear to somebody, I think that’s the biggest thing,” Strome said. “When somebody is having a bad day, make sure that you’re there for them. That’s something that she would always do. She was going through this battle, but she would always put other people first, and that’s the biggest life lesson I’ve probably learned – to always be there for people.”
The Bears host their annual Hockey Fights Cancer game on Saturday evening against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Strome will be there that night at Giant Center, and grandmother and grandson will be thinking of each other. There are a lot of memories between them, and more to be made.
“She is the happiest person I’ve ever met,” Strome said. “It’s just so crazy how stuff goes on… and how tough they are behind the scenes.”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
