SJ Barracuda holding annual teddy bear toss

All right. It has become a very popular and tradition for ice hockey. When a player scores three goals in a game, it's called a hat trick. Traditionally, fans throw their hats onto the ice after that third goal. But now hockey teams are holding teddy bear tosses, encouraging fans to bring a teddy bear and throw it onto the ice. Let's head over to Sal, who has a guest to talk about this special local teddy bear toss. All right, Pam, thank you. The San Jose Barracudas is the American Hockey Affiliate League of the San Jose Sharks. And next Saturday, the Barracudas will host its Teddy Bear Toss. Joining us this week is Kaylee Schmidt, the team's Director of Marketing and Communications. Welcome, Kaylee. Thank you so much for having me on this morning. This is a lot of fun, I've got to tell you. I didn't even know about this until a few years back, about this tradition. But people, once they find out about it, they have a big smile on their face. Can you tell us more about it? Yes, it's definitely one of our more popular games, and I think it's a popular game around the league for any hockey team as well. But basically, people bring in teddy bears. We'll have a station on the concourse. You can bag them up and you can write a note to the kids that these will be donated to. It's definitely very community centered. All of the kids receiving it are kids in need in the Bay Area, especially those at the hospital. Kaiser Permanente and Working Partnerships are partners in this network. They really help us out, but yeah you can see Frenzy having fun with it. So we got about 5,800 bears last year, and we're hoping to hit more this year. That's a lot of kids getting a lot of teddy bears. What are their reactions when they get these stuffed animals? Oh, they love it. Well, we bring friends here, mascot out, and then we bring a couple players as well. So they're there just delivering smiles around the holiday season when, you know, kids who are in the hospital, that's not really where they want to be. So they definitely light up. I think they're very surprised about it, but just the smiles are endless. And the parents always write to us, too, saying like, oh, our kid keeps talking about it. So we're just here to make those memories. You know, the Barracudas have a lot of promotions and special events this season. You know, it's fun enough to go out and see a hockey game, and here is a video of them doing that so people can see what it looks like. Can you tell me about, Kayla, your favorite promotions this season that are coming up? Yeah, so some ones that are coming up, we've got our Pink in the Rink, which is also another Kaiser Permanente night. That one's in February. We have a pop-punk night, so we'll bring in a live pop-punk type band. We're looking at some fun stuff. We have our Country Night presented by Bay Country in February as well. So a lot of different theme nights. We have some more specialty jerseys coming up. Just a lot of fun happening at the Barracuda. All right. Well, it sounds like it. Kaylee Schmidt, thank you so much for joining us. The Barracudas, in case you haven't seen them, it's a good ticket. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Let me switch hats here and go right to the road.