The wife of Ottawa Senators goaltender Craig Anderson is now cancer-free after dealing with a rare form of throat cancer over the past year.
Nicholle Anderson told her husband the news Thursday morning before Ottawa was eliminated by the Pittsburgh Penguins in overtime of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals that night.
"She did a PET scan and MRIs, and as of right now, everything is clean, and we'll just cross our fingers," Craig Anderson told NHL.com on Saturday. "We've got to do scans, I think, every three months. As of right now, things are positive, but you're not out of the woods yet until you get, I think, two years of cancer-free news."
The two words we prayed to hear...CANCER FREE! https://t.co/WLqufST8Xe
— Nicholle Anderson (@xonichollexo) May 27, 2017
In a blog post on her website, Nicholle wrote: "I truly believe hockey helped me through all of this with the playoff run. I couldn't have asked for a better year and memories."
Craig Anderson took a two-month leave of absence during the regular season to be with his wife, who had been diagnosed with nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a cancer that starts in the upper part of the throat behind the nose and near the base of the skull. She underwent treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
The goalie returned to the Senators in February and went on to post 11 playoff wins as Ottawa reached the conference finals for the first time since 2006-07.
Anderson called the season a "roller coaster."
"Ups and downs emotionally, physically," he said. "I think a lot of life lessons learned this year not only by myself, but staff and players, all together. Hockey is a job for us, and it put it in perspective this year."