. Three times, the Hamilton native was set to get a new kidney – about 4,000 Canadians are on a wait list for a transplant – and three times the transplant was postponed. But now, with her kidney function down to 10 per cent, the time has come.
As she grew up, Scozzari had a relatively normal life. For the first few years, she ate only chemical-free food. She never tasted a chocolate until she was four. She ate green beans as a snack. Things began to unravel in her mid to late teens. “I tried to help her calibrate her compass,” Lloyd says. In the past, he has helped develop some of the NHL’s brightest young stars, including Mitch Marner, Max Domi, Dylan Strome and Clayton Keller. “She was not very confident when we began to work together. Fast forward and she has grown exponentially.”
“It has been brutal, especially the last time when it was a week before,” Scozzari says. “It’s like getting ready to jump off a cliff and then at the last second it’s like ‘Nope, we’re not doing it.’ At 20 she did an interview with Zac Rinaldo, then an NHL centre, and it got noticed in the hockey world. Through that, she began to develop connections.
On Nov. 28, 2020, her beloved grandfather, Vito Pisano, died from dementia at 90. It broke her heart when she could not attend his funeral. “My mom was a little hesitant to get together because it is so close to my surgery and thought maybe we should not be around anybody, but I think I am at more risk being at the hospital,” Scozzari says.