How Brian Boyle Raced to Hospital to Welcome New Son with 11 Minutes to Spare

Call it a relationship goal. Find someone who values you as much as Brian Boyle and his wife values his second chance hockey career. On Saturday, Boyle and his wife, Lauren Bedford, welcomed their third child. After telling her husband to go to the Pittsburgh Penguins practice instead of heading home to Massachusetts for the birth of new son Callum, Bedford gave birth just minutes after Boyle raced to the Brigham, MA hospital.

With some quick work by the Penguins director of team operations, Boyle left a Penguins practice meeting, rushed to the airport, hopped a plane, jumped into a waiting car on the other end of the flight, and made it to the hospital with a whopping 11 minutes to spare.

But we’ll let the new father tell the story:

“I have this (smartwatch), and I’ve worn it a lot more for the last month or so–we went in for a meeting down at (PPG Paints Arena), and for whatever reason at the game rink, I think I might have been out of range of my phone or something. I don’t know. I haven’t set it up right or whatever it is. I got a text at 10:05 from my wife, so when I got out of the meeting, I ran and gave her a call.

She actually said, ‘Go practice. I don’t know what’s happening.’

And my sister, who has a family practice–She’s a doctor–she said, I’ll be at your house in 10 minutes, and I’ll let you know.’ And like, seven minutes later, she called me. She said, ‘Get out of there now, get a plane as fast as you can.’

So it turned out she was kind of in labor the night before, and she didn’t want me to come and her not to have the baby. That was her first thought, which I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ So anyways, Jason Seidling (Pittsburgh Penguins director of team operations) got me on a plane–somehow, it was scheduled to leave at like 11:51.

It was like 10 40 at the time. He said, ‘I’m driving you.’

I didn’t have a toothbrush. I had nothing. I just went. And luckily for me, the plane was delayed a little bit. He had a car waiting for me right when I got there, brought me right to the hospital. I walked in the door. Everything was pretty calm. The doctor saw me come in. So she said, ‘Is this the husband here?’

And she checked her out and said, ‘All right, we can try and start now.’

And then it was like four minutes after she started. (Bedford) was a rock star, man. She…3:22 I walked in. 3:33 Callum was born.”

It’s been a whirlwind for Boyle. He joked that he didn’t know what day it was. Callum was a baby New Year and born on 1/1/22. A couple of weeks ago, Boyle didn’t divulge his wife was expecting when PHN asked him to reflect on what the second chance in the NHL meant to him. At the time, part of Boyle’s response was, “I’ve been away from my family…it means that much.”

After a couple of days with mom and Callum, Boyle returned to Pittsburgh Penguins practice on Tuesday. Perhaps if the newest addition to the family gets to the NHL, and he’s superstitious like Sidney Crosby, he’ll wear number 11 too?