Jr. Blues' do-everything Defreitas remembered with cancer, youth hockey benefit

Brad Defreitas knows there will be no physical response from brother Zack Defreitas. That was made cruelly impossible in March of last year when colorectal cancer took Zack’s life at age 30. But that doesn’t stop his older brother from texting Zack two or three times a week.

“I usually text him something about hockey,” Brad said Saturday, while the second annual Zack Defreitas Skate For A Cure was happening at the Nelson Center ice rink. “We both grew up on the Peoria Rivermen, and they won the (Southern Professional Hockey League) title this year, and me and my dad watched it. Sometimes I just type out the text and don’t send it, but this one I did. He was very opinionated about hockey, so I would text something like ‘Hey, did you see who the (St. Louis) Blues signed this week?’ I used to rile him up pretty good, just for fun.”

Zack Defreitas’s true hockey love was the Springfield Jr. Blues. He was both a player and, later, the team’s jack-of-all-trades. He ran the marketing department. He was the traveling secretary. And, best of all, he was the team’s voice, broadcasting games via the team’s streaming feed.

He had dreams of becoming the next John Kelly, the longtime St. Louis Blues broadcaster, or anything close. After being hired in 2018 as the team’s marketing and communications director, Defreitas impressed owner Dan Ferguson Jr., so much that, starting with the 2022-23 Jr. Blues season, he was to be the team’s full-time broadcaster for home and road games.

But, in March of 2022, he was diagnosed with a rare form of colorectal cancer. Despite a brave battle against the disease, he passed away a year later, leaving a wife whom he’d married not long before.

“It’s still tough,” Brad Defreitas said. “It kind of comes and goes. I don’t really feel like it’s real, and I probably never will. He never really shared much with me about his treatments, because he didn’t want me to get upset about it. He was supposed to have gotten surgery in January of ’23, but they did a scan and it had just spread too far. He was put into hospice the morning of (March) 17, and he passed that night.”

Zack Defreitas story: 'He loved everything about the Jr. Blues': Fan favorite, hockey team's do-everything dies

Said Kelly: “I didn't know him, but I'm very sorry to hear this. He seemed to have the right passion for the game and for broadcasting."

Brad set up a website — Gonzoslegacy.net — and organized the Skate For A Cure events to accomplish two things: to raise awareness of colorectal cancer among younger people, and to raise money to buy hockey equipment for Springfield-area youth who want to get into the game.

Tyler Gansky, who was a teammate of Zack’s for several years on different teams, was part of Saturday’s second annual event that included a 3-on-3 tournament. In its first year, the event raised thousands of dollars and, judging by the crowded Nelson Center Saturday, this year’s did very well too.

“That’s been kind of the reasoning for all this, because he would have done it for any of us,” Gansky said. “We lost him too soon. The one thing he loved more than anything was hockey, and we felt the best way to help push what Zack would have wanted is to help kids get into the sport he loved.”

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The way the foundation works is, kids get free hockey equipment (except skates), and if they keep participating in youth hockey beyond a year, the equipment is theirs forever. If not, they can turn it back in for someone else. Some other funds go to cancer research.

“We’re trying to grow the sport more in Springfield. We think it can be growing faster,” Gansky said. “Across the country, it’s growing at a huge pace, and we want to maintain that pace in Springfield. We don’t want kids to have to go to Peoria or St. Louis to play more competitive hockey. We want to keep them here.”

Asked about his last visit in hospice with his friend, Gansky gets choked up.

“It’s a terrible disease. He didn’t deserve that,” Gansky said. “But he was the same Zack he always was, right to the last breath.”

Adrian Dater is a freelance writer for The State Journal-Register. He can be reached through the sports department at sports@sj-r.com.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Jr. Blues' do-everything Defreitas remembered with cancer, youth hockey benefit