US man who deflected hockey puck flying directly at boy, 4, hailed as hero

Nasir Davis and his mother, Asia Davis, with Andrew Podolak in the background; a Cleveland Monsters game. Composite: @asiafromakron/TikTok/Getty Images

An Ohio man who used his arm to deflect a hockey puck flying directly toward a four-year-old boy – sparing him from serious injury or worse – is being heralded as a hero.

The heroic – and coordinated – feat took place last Thursday at a minor league hockey game in Cleveland. The Cleveland Monsters match was nearly finished when a hockey puck launched into the crowd headed straight for little Nasir Davis.

“This puck comes out of heaven, straight toward my son’s head,” said 33-year-old Asia Davis, Nasir’s mom, in a post to TikTok, WOIO reported on Monday.

Being hit with a hockey puck can be deadly. Just last year, an 11-year-old boy from Canada died after being struck in the throat with a puck during hockey practice.

Nasir was, thankfully, saved from injury. A mystery man stopped the puck from hitting Nasir just in time.

“If you know anything about a hockey puck, it’s more dense than a baseball. This dude literally saved my son’s life,” Davis said in the video.

After the startlingly close call, Davis took to social media to try to find the person who had stopped the puck from hitting Nasir. She was hoping to express her gratitude to the selfless stranger.

Davis’s video quickly went viral, leading her to the hero of the hour: Andrew Podolak.

Podolak told WOIO that his friends showed him the video, helping him connect with Davis and Nasir.

Podolak said he remembered seeing the puck heading straight for Nasir. “It was coming up over the glass, and I just saw it was wobbling and whatnot,” he said.

“I was like, ‘Oh God.’ The first thing I gotta do, first instinct, is protect the kid, jump in front of it,” Podolak said to WOIO.

In a split-second decision, Podolak managed to deflect the puck with his arm, the Washington Post reported.

The story of Podolak’s actions and the reunion efforts soon caught the attention of the Cleveland Monsters.

The hockey team reached out to Podolak, Davis and Nasir, offering them free tickets to a game on Saturday and a special on-ice experience.

Before the game’s opening face-off, the three reunited again, met several team members, and were ushered on to the ice for a puck drop.

Davis and Podolak described the reunion as extraordinary, the possible start to an extraordinary friendship between the two.

With every encounter, Davis repeatedly expressed her gratitude to Podolak for saving her son’s life.

“You’re a really special person and I just hope that you never go a day in your life without knowing that,” Davis said to Podolak in an interview with NBC News.