Kade Foster gets blue-and-white birthday surprise from Maple Leafs

Watch as the Maple Leafs give Kade a cake and the crowd sings Happy Birthday to him as the team takes on the Flyers.

Less than a week after he sparked a social-media outpouring of love from #HockeyTwitter, Kade Foster got a re-do of his 11th birthday party.

Foster’s father, Jason, reached out to the Twitterverse on behalf of his son last Sunday, tweeting that the newly minted 11-year-old was forced to celebrate his birthday without any of his friends.

The tweet triggered an avalanche of responses, with everyone from Toronto Maple Leafs captain John Tavares to Star Wars alum Mark Hamill — and more than 50,000 others — offering birthday wishes to the young Leafs fan.

On Saturday, the Maple Leafs ensured Foster’s 11th birthday would be a memorable one for a different reason, as the club and Air Canada flew the Foster family to Toronto for a blue-and-white birthday surprise.

During a first-period break in the action between the Leafs and Philadelphia Flyers, Foster was presented with a birthday cake and the crowd serenaded him with the “Happy birthday” song.

Foster also met with the Leafs players in the dressing room before the game.

The Saturday afternoon meeting was a reunion of sorts for Foster and Tavares, as the Maple Leafs star also made the effort to reach out to the young birthday boy by phone earlier this week.

“It was awesome. I was so surprised, I couldn’t believe it,” Foster said of his call with Tavares, according to NHL.com’s Dave McCarthy.

“His birthday was officially on Monday so I called him on Monday to wish him a happy birthday, and we kind of organized a plan to bring him [to Toronto],” Tavares said of how the plan came together. “It was good to just call and say ‘happy birthday’ and let him know what kind of a big surprise was coming.

“We wanted to try to do something to give him something to celebrate and be happy about.”

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