Miracle on the ice: Stranger saves 4-year-old from flying hockey puck

An Ohio mother took her 4-year-old son out to enjoy a hockey game this month, not realizing a complete stranger would jump in to help when they needed him most.
Asia Davis and her son Nasir went to a Cleveland Monsters hockey game at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse on April 11. The puck went out of play and was headed towards her son. That’s when a stranger sitting next to them came to their rescue.
“It was like he knew the play was going to happen before it actually happened,” Davis told USA TODAY. “Whenever I realized that the puck was coming into the crowd, it was already in the crowd.”
When he reached out to block the puck from hitting her son, it went through his fingers and went behind them, he said. Davis recalls telling him he needed to be a goalie.
“He told me he played baseball,” she added.
She said the kind stranger had been chatting with them here and there throughout the game and at one point, she took a photo of him with her son and the hockey puck. 
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Davis said once the game was over and they went home, her son was sound asleep with the hockey puck. She took it and as she was in bed reflecting on the day, she came to a realization.
“I just kept holding it and I was throwing it up and down,” she said. “I kind of knocked it against my head to see if it would hurt and it did. I was just thinking ‘Man, this could have been really, really bad. And I wanted to really thank him because he prevented a disaster from happening.”
The next day, she reached out to the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse to see if workers could find out who was sitting next to her that night. They couldn’t help so later that night, she made a TikTok asking social media users to help her find him.
She posted about the save at 2 a.m. Saturday morning and by 10, she had a DM from him.
The man, Andrew Podolak, messaged her and she was able to thank him again. She also offered to treat him to the playoffs and maybe to dinner or lunch for saving her little one.
“I was just really grateful,” she said, adding that once their story was shared online the Cleveland Monsters got involved.
They invited both Davis and Podolak to a game on April 13. There, they got to high five and fist bump the players.
Even better? Nasir got to participate in the ceremonial puck drop before the game.
“Andrew told me that he had anxiety and at that point, anxiety was having us because it was insane,” she recalled. “My son did the puck drop. He was a little confused … He dropped it about three times before he was actually supposed to.”
She said the ceremony is something he’ll remember for the rest of his life though.
“The puck drop, all the interviews, all the media attention, that’s great and everything, but at the end of the day, I’m just really grateful and really thankful that my son is OK and that Andrew was sitting there,” Davis said.
Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY’s NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Follow her on Twitter at@SaleenMartin or email her [email protected].