CALGARY — During the Pittsburgh Penguins’ practice Tuesday, an 11-year-old girl named Katherine walked around the Scotiabank Saddledome proudly wearing a Ben Kindel jersey.
She wasn’t just another fan, and Kindel isn’t just any 18-year-old.
Kindel, the Penguins’ impressive rookie, is making a homecoming of sorts on Wednesday, playing an NHL game in Calgary for the first time after starring here for the Calgary Hitmen of the Western Hockey League for the previous two years.
His visit to Calgary highlights his advanced skill on the ice and his remarkable maturity off it.
“He’ll still be in the NHL 15 years from now,” said Kevin Hodgson, Kindel’s billet father in Calgary for two years. “And he will still be that same person, the one who treats people so well and who isn’t full of himself. That’s Ben.”
Hodgson and his wife, Kristie, are frequent billet parents for the Hitmen. They’ve billeted 11 players, all of whom were drafted.
Many of them took an interest in what Hodgson does for a living. For Kindel, who grew up near Vancouver, it became important and remains so.
Hodgson is the executive director of HEROS, a Canadian organization that uses hockey to empower children facing everything from financial hardship to physical and mental conditions. The Hodgsons’ previous billet player, Anaheim draft pick Sean Tschigerl, had become involved in HEROS but, upon being traded away from Calgary, told the then-16-year-old Kindel to continue the charitable work he’d started.
“He told Ben, ‘I need you to take this on for me,’” Hodgson said.
Not long after, Kindel immersed himself in HEROS, which stands for Hockey Education Reaching Out Society. Along the way, he met Katherine, who has Down syndrome, and immediately felt a bond with her.
“Katherine is only capable of saying around 20 words, but she knows how to say Ben Kindel,” Kristie Hodgson said. “She adores him.”
The feeling is mutual.
“She became a part of my life,” Kindel said, smiling at the first mention of her name. “It’s awesome. I’m glad to have her here. HEROS is a big thing for my billet family. It’s a big thing for me, too.”
Kevin and Kristie Hodgson immediately noticed the bond between Kindel and Katherine, whose last name is not used in this story to protect her privacy.
“Everything Ben does is genuine,” Kevin Hodgson said. “He treats Katherine with genuine kindness. She’d come to Hitmen games, and he’d always make sure to skate over to where she was and tap on the glass to her. And I’ll tell you what he did: He made a girl who had never been seen feel seen. And he made a girl who didn’t feel like she belonged in hockey feel like she belonged.”
Ben Kindel has eight goals and 20 points in 45 NHL games. (Mike Carlson / Getty Images)
Despite being in Pittsburgh and handling the day-to-day rigors of life in the NHL as an 18-year-old, Kindel still has Katherine on his mind. The original plan, after all, was for Kindel to remain with the Hitmen this season. His exceptional preseason and training camp changed everything, but it couldn’t create a divide between Kindel and his favorite person in Calgary.
“Christmas came along, (and) he made sure there was a Penguins jersey for her,” Kristie Hodgson said. “He signed it, ‘To Katherine, my favorite hockey player.’ He made sure that she felt important. He does it quietly, in his own way. He does it because it’s the right thing to do.”
The Hodgson family isn’t surprised Kindel has become an instant success with the Penguins. They saw a special maturity in him from the very beginning. Kindel, in fact, wasn’t supposed to live with the Hodgsons when he moved to Calgary at 16. However, he was allergic to dogs and had originally been placed with a billet family that owned multiple dogs. The soft-spoken Kindel didn’t say anything for the first few days but grew so ill that he called his parents in Vancouver to explain the situation. So, he went to live with the Hodgsons.
“I can’t be more grateful for them,” Kindel said. “They’re unbelievable people. They’re so selfless in the community.”
Kindel — “a bit of a rule follower, that kid,” Kristie Hodgson said — was never one to cause trouble in Calgary. Even the smallest amount of hostility from Kindel caught his billet family by surprise.
“He grew up a Habs fan,” Kevin Hodgson said. “Kristie got good at making him dinner for the intermission of the Canadiens games. Then, he’d go back downstairs and watch the games. And we’d hear him yelling at the TV. That was the only time you remembered he was a 16-year-old kid.”
Kindel grew so close with his billet parents that he invited them to the 2025 NHL Draft in Los Angeles. The Hodgsons had read mock drafts and expected Kindel to be drafted at some point late in the first round.
“They announced his name at No. 11, and I said, ‘Oh my God,’” Kristie Hodgson said. “I grabbed my phone to try and get video, and I ended up dropping it. I almost missed all of it.”
Kindel made up for it, scoring his first NHL goal when his billet parents visited Pittsburgh in October. By late September, it became apparent that Kindel would not return to the Hitmen. The Penguins think they have a special player on their hands. Kevin and Kristie Hodgson understand that better than anyone, but the past couple of months have still been bittersweet.
“We miss him quite a bit,” Kristie Hodgson said. “But he’s so mature, so smart, so ready for all of this. I knew he was ready. We dropped him off at the airport, and it’s the least surprising thing ever that he never came back from Pittsburgh.”
It wasn’t so shocking that the Penguins drafted Kindel, either. The Hodgsons could see the signs when Kindel, never late for anything, started to be tardy for dinner.
“It was always Pittsburgh on the phone with him,” Kevin Hodgson said. “Kept making him late. We should have known they were going to take him.”
As the bird flies, 1,778 miles separate PPG Paints Arena and the Saddledome, but that distance hasn’t changed Kindel’s deep bonds. He may have moved on from the Hitmen, but he carries a piece of his Calgary family with him as he writes his next chapter.
“Always,” Kindel said. “Kevin and Kristie are a big part of my life. And so is Katherine.”
