Hockey legend Ron Duguay is hanging up his gloves for one more game.
The former New York Rangers boyfriend of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is battling cancer, his family announced.
They turned to GoFundMe to help cover the rising costs of his treatment.
Duguay’s daughters have started an online fundraiser seeking $26,000 for the Canadian professional hockey player who played six seasons in New York in the 1970s and 1980s and later became an analyst for the MSG Network.
“Due to cancer, he is unable to work as usual,” his daughter Shay wrote on the fundraising page. “Early in his treatment journey, he almost died from the treatment he received in Florida, so we brought him to Orange County, where my sister and I live, so he could receive treatment here.”
His daughter Shay said the move will require Duguay to fly from Florida to Orange County every two weeks for continued care.
“The costs of regular travel and the medical, holistic, supplement, and alternative therapy treatments he has undertaken have been financially prohibitive,” she wrote.
The family is “wanting to give him the best chance possible and is exploring additional treatment options outside of the United States,” the fundraiser said, noting that treatment would be “extremely expensive and would add an additional financial burden to an already difficult time.”
Duguay said he had been battling cancer for a year. He was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer that started in his colon. He said he then lost his appendix and gallbladder.
Mr. Duguay told us that his daughters were the driving force behind the fundraiser, and when we called, he said he didn’t want to advertise but told them to do what they thought was best.
“I find it very difficult to seek funding for all these expenses that I’m going through,” he tells us. “I usually help other people.”
Duguay said cancer is “deadly” and “very expensive.”
He said his numbers have recently spiked again and he feels he needs to “dig deep” and consider all possible options at this time.
“I’m willing to take any alternative in addition to Western medicine,” he says. “I will be able to share what I am learning with others.”
“I need to get better so I can help others,” he told us.
Emotional videos posted on Instagram show Duguay in various hospital beds undergoing medical scans and using a walker. The montage also includes touching moments with the family and his girlfriend, Palin.
“He’s doing the best he can,” the caption reads, before going on to list a number of approaches, some of which have no support from the scientific community. “He has been on living antioxidant water, blood ozone therapy, IV vitamins, ivermectin, methylene blue, and a myriad of other holistic approaches, all while continuing the City of Hope chemotherapy protocol and undergoing major surgeries on both his liver and colon. He is giving it his all, day in and day out. And through it all, his faith has never wavered.”
It has long been known that Duguay was suffering from some kind of illness.
In April 2025, while Ms. Palin was in New York City to pursue a defamation case against The New York Times over a 2017 editorial, the couple attended a Rangers game and Ms. Duguay omitted her opening statement.
Asked where she was, Palin told reporters at the time: “Yeah, he’s battling some health issues right now, but other than that he’s doing very well.” (She lost the case.)
Duguay previously co-hosted the New York Post Sports podcast “Up in the Blue Seats.”
In addition to the Rangers, he also played for the Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Los Angeles Kings.
