Dominic Moore sat there, bedside in the hospital, holding his wife Katie’s hand.
It was Jan. 7, 2013, and Moore had been in that same position for hours. A doctor came by and asked to speak to him out in the hallway, and as he rose to stand up, Katie squeezed.
“It was kind of, like, pretty incredible,” Moore told ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap in an “E:60” documentary airing Thursday at 7 p.m. “I just sat right back down, and didn’t move after that.”
In a short couple hours, Katie would die as a result of the rare liver cancer that had ravaged her body for a year. She was 32.
Just months before, Moore had dropped everything in his life to be with his wife, which meant leaving his NHL team, the San Jose Sharks, in the midst of a first-round playoff series with the Blues. A stout fourth-liner and penalty killer, Moore was an integral part of the team, but missed the final two games of the series knowing there were things far more important than a pursuit of the Stanley Cup.
“I wanted to make sure she knew how proud she should be of herself,” he said of those last few hours with his wife. “A lot of people think you’re a success if you beat cancer, or if you survive or whatever. That’s kind of the way we work in sports, too — either you’re a winner or you’re not. I wanted to make sure she knew that she’s a winner.”
Dominic Moore with his wife, Katie, who died of liver cancer, in the Montreal Canadiens dressing room in 2010.
After that, hockey was the last thing on his mind. Moore went to their apartment in Cambridge, Mass., where the two had so recently built a home together, and took some time for himself. When the lockout ended, he began to receive offers to return to the NHL, but he knew he wasn’t ready.
“Before he says something or does something, he thinks it through,” said Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, who is also interviewed in the piece. “He probably knew that for him to perform at a high level, he had to deal with this first.”
Moore started the Katie Moore Foundation, built to help “patients and families dealing with rare cancers through research, advocacy, and community.” Last summer, he started skating again and signed a one-year, $1 million deal with the Rangers to play in New York, the first place he and Katie had lived after college.
The two had fallen in love as students at Harvard, with Moore having followed in the footsteps of his two brothers, going from Thornhill, Ontario, just outside Toronto, to play hockey for the most prestigious academic institution in America. As a freshman in 2000, he earned Ivy League Rookie of the Year, and was drafted that summer in the third round by the Rangers. In his sophomore year, he met a girl named Katie who was a star on the soccer team.
“She was the best-looking girl on campus,” Moore said.
The two started dating, and when Moore turned pro in 2003, they committed to trying to make it work. Once Katie finished her master’s degree in international relations, the couple moved in together in New York. They moved six times in the next six years, and in 2010, she set up a scavenger hunt of Scrabble letters, their favorite game to play together. They spelled out, “Will you marry me?”
On July 3, 2010, they married in Newport, R.I.
Now at 33, Moore has played for nine NHL teams, and his second incarnation with the Rangers has been similar to the first — playing the role as a hard-working, checking center, seeing action in 73 games, scoring six goals, collecting 18 points, and finishing with an even plus-minus rating.
Now in the playoffs with the Blueshirts, Moore is readying for Game 4 of their first-round series against the Flyers on Friday night back at the Wells Fargo Center, his team up 2-1 in the best-of-seven contest.
What he carries with him now means much more than just dreams of hoisting a trophy.
“She’s … she’s … 100 percent of my life,” Moore said. “Not only her example, but her presence is with me, 100 percent of the time, all the time.”