Cunningham drops puck at Coyotes game
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Craig Cunningham skated across the Gila River Arena ice, quickly stickhandling as made a wide-arcing turn. He fired the puck against the sideboards and looked down at his skates, scissoring them forward and back to get a feel for the ice.
“I’m not as fast as used to be, but it went well,” Cunningham said before the Arizona Coyotes game against Minnesota on Saturday night. “It’s kind of hard to skate without an ankle, there’s a lot of things going on, but I made the correct adjustments and things seem to be going well.”
That Cunningham is skating at all is close to a miracle.
Just five months ago, the 26-year-old captain of the Tucson Roadrunners, the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate, was fighting for his life after collapsing on the ice during pregame warm-ups.