More often than not, attaining success at the highest level is only made possible by having a loving and supportive family by your side. For the hockey star Cam Atkinson, that’s exactly what happened. The right winger has already played 14 NHL seasons with three different franchises. Goes without saying, he had the best fan an athlete can hope for standing by him every step of the way.

Atkinson’s grandma, Margaret “Marge” Robben, was quite a renowned face within the country’s hockey community. Especially for the Philadelphia Flyers, Marge became a sort of poster girl thanks to her sporting the team’s black and orange stripes after Cam was traded there from Columbus. But now, the star will need to look elsewhere for that kind of support in the future.

In a post on X on July 14, Atkinson shared the heartbreaking news that would make any hockey fan feel the blues. “My biggest fan from day one. Graham cracker you will be missed,” wrote Cam in his post with a photo of himself smiling broadly alongside Margaret, as he announced the passing of his grandma. “Have some wine with papa, I love you!!!” Atkinson seemed to find some solace in knowing that the elderly NHL fangirl wouldn’t be alone where she’s going.

In the attached image, Marge can be seen wearing the Flyers’ jersey with the back to her front, the exact way of donning the apparel that made her an instant hit with the Philadelphia clan four years ago. “Now the Flyers need to win the cup for Grandma Marge!” wrote one fan when the NHL star’s grandma’s image in the team’s stripes first hit social media.

In his two years playing for the Flyers, Atkinson posted 78 points in 143 NHL regular-season games before leaving for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Though not the kind of stat that will make the winger eligible for the Philly Hall of Fame, the memories of Marge will be something that the fans won’t be forgetting anytime soon. The fans’ adoration was something special for her as well.

“I don’t know if it was the fact that I’m a grandmother or I was on the Internet or what it was, but something hit the heartstrings of the fans,” she said in 2021 about the response from the Flyers community. She had gone to take a nap after posting the picture of herself wearing a Flyers jersey with her grandson’s name on it and woke up as a new NHL celebrity. “I got up and I saw a couple of messages and said oh, something’s happening. The Philadelphia Flyers are onto this. And then it was going on for two days, all the beeping … and they are inviting me to a parade, they’re going to take me out for drinks and they’re going to pay for everybody, they can. It was just so cute,” Marge gushed about the response, which extended well beyond social media.

How the Flyers cemented Grandma Marge’s NHL celebrity status

Despite being from an older generation, Grandma Marge was no novice when it came to social media. “I wanted to be a part of my grandchildren’s lives, and the only way you can do that is if you know what they’re doing, you go where they go,” she said. But while she was on Twitter (now X), Facebook, Instagram, and even TikTok, going viral wasn’t exactly on her bingo card. Overwhelmed, she had told Atkinson, “Cam, I can’t wait till it’s over.” To this, her grandson had replied, “Grandma, you’ve just begun.” It was true.

The Philadelphia Flyers management came to know about her social media popularity soon, and went so far as to launch an entire line of t-shirts featuring her likeness wearing Atkinson’s jersey backwards. She, along with fifty other family members, also travelled to the Wells Fargo Center to attend Atkinson’s debut for the Flyers on October 15, 2021. And during the second intermission of the game, she rode the Zamboni in front of almost twenty thousand fans, wearing Atkinson’s t-shirt backwards, of course. “I wanted to put on ice skates and skate out to Gritty [the Flyers’ mascot], but my kids said, ‘No way,'” Marge later told News12.

Grandma Marge’s infectious energy will be dearly missed as she joins many other icons of the NHL community in the great beyond. In April, Mark “Trees” LaForest, an ex-NHL goalie who played for several teams, including the Philadelphia Flyers, also went into the great beyond. LaForest’s (in)famous brawl with New Jersey’s Sean Burke remains a vivid memory among longtime fans, and the sadness of his passing was felt acutely by the community. Earlier this month, Red Wings legend Alex Delvecchio passed away at the age of 93. Delvecchio had played 1670 NHL games over a sprawling career and was a member of Gordy Howe’s legendary “Production Line”. For obvious reasons, his death was difficult to deal with. Each and every one of these icons embodied the spirit of the sport in their own unique way, and that is how they will continue to be remembered.