Autumn Saturday afternoons at 12:30pm(ET) are not your typical hockey times. Most people, if they’re into sports, are tuned into college football at that time. 

However, Saturday, November 8, 2025, was not your typical Autumn afternoon. For three lucky – and we do emphasize the word lucky – kids, thanks to the New Jersey Devils and The Make-A-Wish Foundation, this particular afternoon was an opportunity to live out a collective dream, to meet Jack Hughes and his teammates. 

Sure, the Devils beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 2-1 in a shootout courtesy of Jesper Bratt’s filthy goal in the second round of the skills contest, as well as Arseny Gritsyuk’s goal at the end of the first period and Jake Allen’s clutch 33-save performance, but that wasn’t what mattered most, not on this day.

For Giovanni Maisano, Darby Siefert and Natalie Honzalek, the game was the culmination of a magical two days that brought them together to live out a dream they never thought they’d have the opportunity to experience. 

The Make-A-Wish Foundation’s mission is to fulfill the wishes of children who are seriously ill. 

As Emily Mangione, a Senior Wish Coordinator, put it, “We’re so grateful for the New Jersey Devils and their partnership for making all of this possible. They’ve gone really above and beyond to make the last few days such an unforgettable experience for our wish children and their families that they really deserve. We’re really grateful for their support and just this experience that these children will never forget.”

Giovanni, Darby and Natalie have each been Devils fans for varying degrees of time, with Maisano being the youngest of the three and Siefert the oldest. But one thing all three of them agreed upon was that they love Jack Hughes. 

“He was my celebrity crush in high school,” Siefert shyly admitted. “I saw the TikTok edits of him when I was in high school, so that’s how that (came about), when he was still a rookie. I always liked hockey, though.”

“Ever since he got drafted, I started liking him a lot,” Maisano chimed in. “I like how he plays and how he shoots and passes the puck a lot. I’ve been a Devils fan since I was two, so it’s not like I just like the Devils ’cause he’s on the team.”

“I think they’re a great team and I honestly just love Jack,” Honzalek said. “He’s such a nice and good player. They’re just a great team.”

There’s no question that Hughes and the Devils are doing their part to make this an unforgettable experience for three of their most deserving fans. After all, life has not been easy for Giovanni, Darby, Natalie, and their families. 

“Last year, in May, my stomach started hurting really bad, Maisano recalled. “I was in the nurse’s office every day at school, but no one would believe me, even the nurse or my parents wouldn’t believe me. They thought I was just trying to skip and get out of class. But then, one day, I felt really bad and I went to the nurse before school even started…I felt really sick, worse than I’ve ever felt. 

“So they called my mom. My mom comes and picks me up and she brings me to the children’s hospital, and they do some tests, and they diagnose me with Crohn’s Disease. They made me stay two or three days and gave me medications. I went back home for maybe like a week or two, but then it just kept getting worse. So I was in and out of the hospital from May to pretty much August. And then, in September, I had my first surgery, a Bowel Resection. I had an ileostomy bag for about four months and was on a feeding tube from June through September. And then the ostomy bag helped me get a lot better. 

“In January, I had my second surgery to remove the bag, but there were complications with that one…After my second surgery, I was just lying in a hospital bed. I woke up and my mom saw there was blood all over me. She called in the nurse, they went to stand me up and then blood just started pouring out. So, they laid me back down. But then the next thing I know, there’s like 20 people in the room helping. Then they moved me to the ICU. They gave me two or three blood transfusions and then blood-clotting medications and other medications to help me get better. And then I just got better and I’ve felt fine ever since then.”

“Now he’s in remission,” Giovanni’s Mother said. “But he does get treatments every four weeks and just takes it day by day.”

He’s a strong young man, and he even plays travel hockey, so here’s to a bright future for Giovanni.

“I have Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy,” Siefert explained. “I got diagnosed with that when I was like two-and-a-half, three years old. I had a heart murmur. I obviously don’t remember this; this is what I’ve been told. So I had a heart murmur, and then they were like, ‘Maybe it’s nothing.’ 

“Then I got it checked out, and they’re like, ‘actually, it’s not nothing.’ I didn’t really have many symptoms until I was in middle school. In high school, I started passing out, and my heart stopped like three times. So then I had to get a defibrillator put in right before my junior year of high school. It’s never gone off. It’s never fired. So I’m relatively okay now. But that’s what happened. 

“I’ve been in and outta the hospital my whole life ’cause my immune system doesn’t work the way it should because of the heart issue with blood flow and whatever. One of my nurses, who I had when I was an inpatient when I got my surgery, recommended me for Make-A-Wish.”

And as for Honzalek, “I’m pretty sure it started when I was at a game. I was stopping the puck. The puck hit my helmet cage and after that game, my face was just really hurting. It was swelling up, and we thought that it would go away within a week. But it ended up being a rare form of sarcoma. Then, shortly after that, we started chemo. 

“We tried four different types of chemo. None of that worked. Then we tried radiation. It sort of worked, but not really. And then we just ended up doing some surgeries, and that ended up getting it back to normal, kind of. This was going on for a little over two years.”

As you can see, this trio has been through quite a lot despite their young ages. And as part of their two-day experience, they’ve gotten to meet Devils players and Alumni, go shopping in the team store, be in the team dressing room, go out on the ice with the players, watch the game from a private suite and so much more. 

“I have been with Make-A-Wish for almost four years now,” said Mangione. “And we have children always wishing to meet different sports teams and different celebrities. It’s always an amazing experience. These athletes, nobody’s making them do this. It’s just out of the goodness of their hearts that they’re going out of their way to make these children feel really special and watching their wishes come true right in front of our eyes is an unforgettable experience for us and for these children and their families.

“We have longstanding partnerships with the Devils and they’ve granted wishes for us before, so we know we can always rely on them to create an unforgettable experience for these children. It’s nice to know that we’ve always got them in our corner when these children wish to meet these players and have these incredible days with the team.”

That long-standing partnership is something this trio of kids will cherish forever. Here are a few of the stories from the kids that will always stay with them.

“I felt really good,” Giovanni said before the Devils-Penguins game. “It felt like it wasn’t real. It was nice talking to Jack and Luke Hughes, and especially (Ken) Daneyko. I think he’s funny, but he is really cool also…The last 20 minutes (of practice), we were on the ice and we did a 2V2. It was me and Jack versus Paul Cotter and Natalie. Jack and I won. He got all my assists, I got all the goals. It was really fun.”

“We mostly just talked about my college hockey team (Northern Michigan University) and our rival,” Darby said. “We (Myself, Jack Hughes, Paul Cotter and Bruce Driver) kind of just talked about that…Nico Hischier showed me the gym, ’cause I wanted to see the gym, ’cause I lift. So that was fun that I got to do that. I’ve gotten to do everything I wanted to do.”

“I started to like the Devils during my stay at the hospital,” recounted Natalie. “We would always watch hockey games or the playoffs whenever we were stuck in a hospital overnight…And I do (still) play hockey. So it was amazing being out there with them (Jack Hughes and Paul Cotter). I couldn’t believe it, and I still can’t believe it. It was just crazy to know I was out there with them.”

There you have it. A memorable two-day experience for three kids who absolutely deserve to have some light in their lives. And to cap it all off, they witnessed their favorite team win an excellent game, 2-1 in a shootout. As it pertains to The Make-A-Wish Foundation’s mission of fulfilling kids’ wishes, I’d say mission accomplished.