Ariana Grande was hit by NHL pucks twice as a child

Jeremiah Rodriguez, CTVNews.ca Staff</span>
Published Sunday, February 10, 2019 10:38AM EST

Before becoming one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, Ariana Grande was just the “Boca kid” who had been struck with two hockey pucks at NHL games by the time she was five years old.

According to a newly resurfaced 1998 newspaper snippet from The Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Florida, the future songstress had been hit twice.

At the time, her mother Joan Grande-Butera told the newspaper that her daughter had been first struck that January in the right wrist -- after now-retired Florida Panthers player Gord Murphy had attempted a shot.

According to the piece written by Jose Lambiet, Grande was hit again during the Florida Panthers’ first game in the National Car Rental Center arena in October.

This time she was struck in her left wrist by an errant puck was fired by a Tampa Bay player.

The second hit made Grande the first fan to be struck in a regular season game in the then-new arena.

She suffered a bruise and was given an ice pack in the nearest First Aid station inside the arena. At the time, Grande’s dad Ed was quoted as asking, “what are the odds of this happening?”

These weird pieces of celebrity trivia all came up after Sudbury Ont. writer Mike Commito tweeted a October 1998 picture which showed the youngster sporting a Florida Panthers jersey and riding a Zamboni.

According to the newspaper clipping, Grande also made another small piece of history for being the being the first child of the season to take a Zamboni ride in the new arena.

But in what could be a nod to her future as pop royalty, the article described her as “waving at fans like a queen taking a horse and carriage ride.”

And now -- after dropping several popular albums -- she’s slaying like a queen for real.

I just saw a picture of @ArianaGrande riding the Zamboni @FlaPanthers game in 1998, but the real story is that, by the age of 5, she had already been struck by two pucks at NHL games. She was actually the first person to be hit by a puck in the Panthers' new arena #FlaPanthers pic.twitter.com/9h1xSSPN7W
— Mike Commito (@mikecommito) February 9, 2019