Patrick Coulter, 14, collapsed Friday at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.

Courtesy of Bill Coulter

PROVIDENCE — The Coventry teenager who collapsed and died in the Dunkin’ Donuts Center after a Providence Bruins hockey game Friday night apparently suffered cardiac arrest stemming from a condition that had been diagnosed years ago, his father said yesterday.

Patrick Coulter, 14, “was a good kid who just had a bad heart,” Bill Coulter said.

Patrick, a ninth grader at Coventry High School, was among several hundred members of church youth groups throughout the region who were attending the church Revival Night held annually at the arena. After the Bruins’ game against the Portland Pirates, there was concert music and a speaker, and then a raffle.

Shortly before midnight, the crowd was waiting expectantly in the stands for the announcement of the winner of the grand prize, a Nintendo Wii video-game system. The winner was Patrick, his father said, and the boy jumped up and down excitedly before rushing down to the ice to claim his prize.

Then he collapsed, falling into the penalty box, whose glass shield had been removed for the post-game events.

Emergency medical technicians on duty in the arena used an automatic external defibrillator “but were not able to bring him back,” Bill Coulter said. “He did not have a heartbeat and they weren’t able to establish one.”

At age 6 or 7, Patrick was diagnosed with ventricular tachycardia, which can produce episodes of overly rapid heartbeat, his father said. “It’s induced by stress and the push of adrenaline that causes the heart to go into a rapid heartbeat, like a flutter.”

On Friday night, Coulter and his wife, Melissa, went to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, where Patrick, their only child, was pronounced dead. The couple gave their permission for the state medical examiner’s office to conduct an autopsy.

“We believe the medical results will show that it was something that is caused by this condition,” Coulter said.

Often, he said, such an episode could lead to brief unconsciousness and then the restoration of a normal heartbeat. He said Patrick, who took a beta-blocker drug daily, had never suffered such an episode before.

“We’ve done our best to medically try to make him better,” Coulter said. “This is definitely a crushing blow to us.”

The Coulter family moved to Coventry from Warwick in 2001. Patrick was an active member of the youth group at Faith Baptist Church, in Warwick, his father said, and Friday’s event marked the third consecutive year he had attended the Revival Night.

Patrick was an avid sports fan, his father said, and had his doctors’ permission to play baseball. He pitched in the Cal Ripken League in Coventry and most recently for the Coventry Babe Ruth League. “He was a big Sox fan, a big Patriots fan and loved college football,” said his father. “He was a great kid. He really loved sports, and unfortunately his condition just held him to playing baseball. I think he would have been a hell of a hockey player and a hell of a football player. He was a good, solid kid — just a rugged guy.”

“He was a kid who liked to have fun,” said his father. “He liked to laugh, and liked to make other people laugh. He loved his sports, he loved to win and he loved the competition. He had an active imagination, and always imagined himself getting that big hit.”

“He’s my only boy,” Coulter said. “He was a great kid and I’m going to miss him.”

jmcdonal@projo.com