"Wild" 'Staches Help Fight Cancer
Playoff beards are pretty common in professional hockey, but November mustaches? They certainly won't help a team win the Stanley Cup, but the Minnesota Wild hope they might do something better - raise awareness of prostate cancer.
Wild players have been sporting 'staches as part of the newly dubbed month of "Movember" - a month-long effort that hits close to home for some of them.
"A close friend mine from back home … his dad has prostate cancer right now, so it's something where he fired me the e-mail about 'Movember' and kind of got me involved and … thought it would be kind of neat if we got the guys here to do it. So the guys kind of grasped it and embraced it," defenseman Nick Schultz told CBS station WCCO in Minneapolis.
And while it's all for a good cause, it's also just good fun for the players.
"I think it's a competition to see who can grow the best one," said defenseman Greg Zanon. "That's how we're taking it, is, you know, a fun time to just kind of look silly."
"Mikko [Koivu] stopped me in warm-up the other day, and we had a sign making fun of his mustache, or rather, his attempt at one, so, you know, it's something easy to do so why not do it?" added defenseman Brent Burns.