Walman buys trading cards for young fans after chance encounter

Luke and Jake Stephens just went to check out some hockey cards. Little did they know they'd end up meeting a guy who was on one.

The Stephens family just happened to be strolling their local big box chain store on Friday. That's where they ran into Edmonton Oilers defenseman Jake Walman.

Adam and Angela Stephens and their three children -- sons Luke, age 9, and Jake, age 7, and daughter Emma, age 5 -- were on an outing to pick up some essentials. As happens when shopping with kids, the boys convinced their parents to check out the trading cards section. Luke favors Pokémon cards while Jake is a big hockey card collector.

"I was just kind of wandering around the store," Adam Stephens told NHL.com. "And there is Jake Walman picking up a tin of cards. He was just waiting and he started up a conversation, just being a nice guy."

Adam said Walman (who is a known Pokémon collector) saw the kids checking out the hockey cards and asked if they were Oilers fans. When they both said yes, he asked their favorite player. One said Connor McDavid and the other said Leon Draisaitl.

"That's when he told them he played for the Oilers and he asked if they'd heard of Jake Walman. And my son said, 'My dad loves him, he was so happy when they traded for him,'" Stephens said. "He talked to them for like 10 minutes about everything: Pokémon, hockey, Minecraft."

Adam said Walman offered to buy them some cards, with permission from the parents. The boys picked out a pack each, but Walman insisted on each of them getting their own box. And since Emma isn't a card collector, Walman picked out a Minecraft stuffed animal for her. The family asked for a picture and Walman obliged.

“I like doing that stuff,” Walman said at media day on Tuesday. “I think we’re in a position to be able to do that kind of thing and make people’s day. So, I always try to interact with fans or kids.”

The picture went viral over the weekend, making "mini celebrities" of the Stephens kids at their school, Lakeland Ridge in Sherwood Park, Alberta, Adam said.

The school already has an Oilers wall that they plan on adding the photo to before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday, when the Oilers will take on the Florida Panthers for a second straight season.

"Oil Fever, it's crazy here," Stephens said.

Adam works at Royal Alexandra Hospital in the children's wing, so he's seen plenty of players come through and make time for kids there, but the store encounter was different. Walman could have slipped by undetected, but instead decided to be nice to some random kids.

"He's quite a personality," Stephens said of the encounter. "When athletes make the time for kids, it's special. When you're a fan as an adult you connect to a team when they are winning. But kids connect to stuff like this. They're Oilers fans now on a whole other level.

"They all want his jersey now. My daughter won't stop saying the name Jake Walman," Stephens said. "She named her stuffed animal after him."

NHL.com senior writer Tom Gulitti contributed to this report