from Sony Sachdeva of Sportsnet,

For the first time in NHL history, a Muslim player had won the Stanley Cup, and would have his name etched upon it.

Back in the Kadris’ home province, it was a moment many a Muslim hockey lover will never forget. And one that required some agonizing moments endured before it arrived.

Omar Essawi, who’s part of the committee that runs the Muslim ball hockey league I-Slam Hockey out of North York, spent those final, tense moments of Game 6 with eyes flitting between the television and his phone, where his WhatsApp group chats were chiming away frenetically.

“Oh, man,” he says. “Whether it was the I-Slam [group chat] or another hockey group with some Muslims that I play with on the weekend, we were all just kind of anticipating, all just counting down the end of the game.”

It was the same story for Humaira Sedu, founder of Toronto’s Muslimah Athletic Club, an organization providing community for Muslim women who want to play the game. “I was counting down. I was like, ‘30 seconds, 20 seconds, 15,” she says. “My brother had just come home — he was walking in the door and I'm yelling at him, counting down the numbers, like, ‘They're doing it! They're doing it!’”

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