WINNIPEG – Prairie boy and NHL star Jonathan Toews is winning more hearts after he invited a little girl into his home to sell Girl Scout cookies.
Alexis, 5, entered the Chicago Blackhawks’ #WhatsYourGoal contest with a 20-second video shot shortly after she saw a commercial for the campaign on TV. The tiny Blackhawks fan – who never gets to see the end of a game because they go past her bedtime, but always asks in the morning who won — sat on a bed in her PJs while she told her parents what she wanted to do.
“Sell Girl Scout cookies to my favourite Blackhawks player, Jonathan Toews!” she said.
Alexis’s hair wasn’t even combed and the family didn’t expect anything to come of the video, said her mom, Amy, who preferred that their last name not be used to protect her daughter.
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“We actually told her, ‘Don’t expect a response.’ ”
To their surprise, their video was chosen as a winner, and Alexis, in the company of Blackhawks centre Andrew Shaw, who’s from Belleville, Ont., paid a visit to Toews, the pride of Winnipeg, on Feb. 12.
READ MORE: Canada’s athletes in Sochi: Meet forward Jonathan Toews
Capt. Serious, as he’s known in Chicago, smiled and invited Alexis in while jokingly instructing Shaw to stay off his property.
She got a chance to play with Toews’ dog before they sat down at a desk to discuss sales.
“Let’s talk business here, Alexis. What are those new cookies you were talking about there. I want to see those,” Toews says in the video.
“They’re the Rah-Rah ones,” Alexis responds, reaching for a box of Rah-Rah Raisins.
WATCH: Jonathan Toews talks about playing in his hometown
Later in the video, Toews sews another badge (a mini Blackhawks sweater) on her well-adorned Girl Scouts vest – but gets it crooked and overlapping with another badge, much to his chagrin.
“He had a look of absolute horror on his face,” said Amy, explaining Toews seemed quite concerned and asked if he’d ruined Alexis’s uniform. “It was genuine. None of it was scripted.”
Amy was informed by Blackhawks staff when the video was made public and it took all of 10 minutes for her Facebook page to explode, she said.
The video on the Blackhawks’ Facebook page had more than 36,000 likes, almost 25,000 shares and more than 260 comments early Friday afternoon.
“They were really wonderful,” Amy said about Toews and Shaw. “They’re not obligated to do any of that stuff.”
As for Alexis, as far as she’s concerned, she’s just got some new friends.
“She doesn’t really grasp the enormity of it,” Amy said. “She went and she met two new friends.”
Toews joins fellow Winnipeg-born Blackhawks forward Patrick Sharp, who shot a video with 16-year-old Christina DeVries, a blind fan whose goal was to attend a Blackhawks game.
WATCH: Christina DeVries, 16, attends her first Blackhawks game at the United Centre
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