Saturday 11 April 2020

Hockey community mourns passing of Cave

Oilers system forward, Broncos alum left good mark on many

Broncos captain Colby Cave (#10) in a WHL post-series handshake in 2014.
    It was a piece of news that those in the hockey world know it would make a lot of people sad.
    Early Saturday morning, Colby Cave, a forward in the Edmonton Oilers system, passed away after suffering a brain bleed on Monday. The North Battleford, Sask., product and alumnus of the WHL’s Swift Current Broncos was just 25-years-old.
    The Oilers confirmed Cave’s death with a statement from his family. His death didn’t have any link to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that is currently raging havoc on the world.
    Cave had been admitted to a hospital in Barrie, Ont., on Monday, and he had to be airlifted to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.
    He was placed in a medically-induced coma on Tuesday at Sunnybrook Hospital and underwent emergency surgery with doctors removing a colloid cyst that was causing pressure on his brain.
    Cave, who stood 6-foot-1 and weighed 200 pounds, suited up for 11 games for the Oilers this season collecting a goal and dressed in 44 games with their AHL affiliate the Bakersfield Condors posting 11 goals and 12 assists.
    Almost immediately after his passing was made public, condolences poured in over various social media lines. Cave was one of hockey’s good guys, who built numerous friendships in the game.
    His wife, Emily, created a warm, emotional and heartbreaking post on Instagram including photos of her clutching Colby in hospital to say goodbye to him along with a heartfelt caption.
    They got married on July 19, 2019 and won’t get to celebrate a first anniversary together.






To my best friend & love of my life, Colby 🤍 My heart is shattered. The amount of physical, mental, and emotional pain I am in when I think about never seeing, touching, or holding you again is unbearable. You are and will always be my person, my hero, the greatest thing to happen to me. I never dreamed of being a widow before our first wedding anniversary. Although, every cell in my body is lost without you, I promise to continue to make you proud. You were the best friend, husband, doggy daddy, and oh how I wished to see you as a baby daddy. I’ll see you again soon, Colb. You’ll be in heaven meeting me with a warm wet kiss. You’ll be with me every step of the way. I don’t want to stop writing just like I didn’t want to stop holding you this morning at the hospital. You are my everything. You always will be. Thank you for now being the best Guardian Angel. Just as you ended your vows, I am going to end with one word, AGAPE. ✨
A post shared by Emily Cave (@em.cave) on

    Their Instagram accounts are filled with cute young couple photos of the two together. After seeing those photos, it is as automatic gut punch reminder that life isn’t fair, when you think about Colby’s passing.
    On Saturday, The Canadian Press caught up with Mark Lamb, who was the Broncos head coach and general manager during Cave’s career with the team from 2011 to 2015. Lamb, who is now the head coach and general manager of the WHL’s Prince George Cougars, gave lots of praise for Cave.
    “It’s just his infectious smile and that he was a great person to be around,” said Lamb from his home in Prince George, B.C., to The Canadian Press. “That’s the thing I remember about him most.
    “He was the type of player that could do it all. He was our leader in pretty much every category on our team. He was our leading scorer.
    “He was our best faceoff guy. He was just an all-around player, and probably, if he wasn’t the best two-way player in the league, he was right there.”

    Way back in the 2009 WHL Bantam Draft, Cave was selected in the first round and 13th overall by the Kootenay Ice, but he never played a regular season or post-season game with the Ice.
    He came to the Broncos as part of the massive Cody Eakin trade made on Jan.9, 2011. In that deal, the Broncos traded Eakin, who was their star captain, to the Ice in exchange for Ice roster forward Christian Magnus, four list players including Cave, Ryan Bloom, Jarett Zentner and Steven Myland, 1st and 2nd round selections in the 2011 WHL Bantam Draft and third round pick in the 2012 WHL Bantam Draft.
    Eakin helped the Ice win the WHL championship that season.
    Cave was playing for his hometown Battlefords Stars in the Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League and was in his 16-year-old season at the time of the trade. He made his debut with the Broncos before the 2010-11 campaign came to an end.
    He played in 287 career regular season games with the Broncos piling up 95 goals and 107 assists for 202 points.

    Cave was the Broncos captain in his final two seasons with the club, which were his best campaigns in the WHL.
    In 2013-14, Cave played in all of the Broncos 72 regular season games piling up 33 goals and 37 assists and a plus-20 rating in the plus-minus department. During his final campaign with the Broncos in 2014-15, Cave again appeared in all 72 regular season games recording 35 goals, 40 assists and a plus-three rating.
    Cave joined the Broncos at a time when they were rebuilding and trying to re-establish links in Swift Current and the surrounding area communities. He was a regular in getting out in the community to do that ground work.
    The Broncos made the playoffs in Cave’s last three years with the club. They had a strong season in 2013-14 posting a 38-25-3-6 regular season record and came up one point in the standings short of overtaking the Regina Pats for first place in the East Division.
    Sellout post-season crowds of 2,890 returned to the Innovation Credit Union i-Plex, which were vocally and enthusiastically behind the Broncos. It was the first time in a while engaged crowds had been seen like that in the Broncos home rink.
    In a first round playoff series against the Medicine Hat Tigers in 2014, Broncos fans followed their team to Medicine Hat to invade the Tigers long time old home rink in The Arena. The Broncos intro video for their home games in that post-season featured a number of highlights from Cave.
    The Tigers ultimately claimed that best-of-seven series in six games.
    During his final season with the Broncos, Cave was teammates with a sophomore 17-year-old centre named Glenn Gawdin and a rookie 16-year-old right-winger in Tyler Steenbergen. Both Gawdin and Steenbergen became key pieces in helping the Broncos win the WHL title in 2017-18.
    Following his time with the Broncos, Cave joined the Boston Bruins organization and would appear in 23 NHL regular season games with that club.
    The Oilers claimed Cave off waivers on Jan. 15, 2019. Cave finished the 2018-19 season playing 33 regular season games with the Oilers registering two goals and one assist.
    With the outpouring of support that has been shown for Cave on social media since his passing, it feels like he was destined to do more in the physical world. In the short time he was here, he touched and had a positive impact on a large number of lives.

Free Press columnist looks at 1918 Spanish Flu, other notes

    With the world currently battling the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, Winnipeg Free Press business columnist Brent Bellamy decided to go back in time and take a look at how his publication covered the Spanish Flu pandemic from 1918-19.
    In some places in the world, the Spanish Flu pandemic continued to 1920.
    The Spanish Flu was an H1N1 influenza strain that proved to be particularly deadly. It is estimated it infected about 500-million people in the world, which would have been a third of the world’s population at that time.
    It is estimated the Spanish Flu killed 20 to 50-million people worldwide.
    Bellamy noted there were many similarities of what happened with the Spanish Flu back then compared to the COVID-19 pandemic of today. He put out his discoveries in a series of tweets on Thursday.
    Bellamy said the Free Press in 1918 noted New York City was a hotspot for the Spanish Flu, and New York City is a hotspot for COVID-19 in today’s time.
    He found out that in early October of 1918 a few cases of the Spanish Flu began to appear in Winnipeg without major headlines in the Free Press.
    Bellamy found a column in 1918 asking people to stay home in order to halt the spread of the Spanish Flu. In the current day, Canada as a country is observing lockdown measures to battle COVID-19.
    He found an article from October 11, 1918 warning of impending closures. Bellamy proceeded to show and article from October 12, 1918 ordering the closure of all public meeting places.
    That included the closures of schools and churches.
    He showed how the growing number of local cases of Spanish Flu were reported in the Free Press on a daily basis and how the Winnipeg media outlet kept an eye on what was going on in the rest of the world.
    There was talk in Winnipeg about flattening the curve of the Spanish Flu, which is a familiar refrain these days when it comes to battling COVID-19.
    Bellamy found a piece that universities were sending homework and assignments to students through the mail during the time of the Spanish Flu. In the current day, university students are doing work online in the face of COVID-19.
    In 1918 Winnipeg, there was a fear the Spanish Flu could break out in prisons and wearing masks in public was hotly debated. Those types of issues are occurring in the current day with COVID-19.
    There were stories during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic in Winnipeg about health care workers being most at risk. Those types of concerns are happening in the current day with the COVID-19 pandemic.
    Bellamy found an article from November 28, 1918 stating the shutdowns in Winnipeg over the Spanish Flu were being lifted.  
    Bellamy continued to document Spanish Flu developments in the rest of Canada and the world from the old Free Press archives. He quoted a Spanish Flu wrap up piece from 1919 stating 12,000 people in Winnipeg became ill because of the disease and 824 people died.
    Even though the Spanish Flu pandemic happened just over 100 years ago, Bellamy’s journey through the Free Press archives shows just how much history can repeat itself.
    Another similarity the research didn’t uncover was that there was no vaccine for the Spanish Flu during the years that pandemic was active from 1918-20. The first licensed flu vaccine didn’t appear until the 1940s.
    In the current day, there is no vaccine for COVID-19. No one is certain when a vaccine will be discovered for COVID-19 either.
    I pulled those nuggets of information from a documentary piece on the Spanish Flu created by the History Channel.
    It should be noted that the statistics from the Spanish Flu pandemic are estimates, because statistics weren’t well kept in some instances. In other instances, statistics for the Spanish Flu were under-reported in media outlets due to government control measures that were in place from the First World War, which was coming to an end in 1918 when the Spanish Flu broke out.

  • Over the past week, Saskatoon keeps popping up as a potential quarantine city to play NHL playoffs games in to complete the 2019-20 season. From what I understand, players from teams would be housed in a city and would play their games in front of empty arenas. I don’t know if this will come to pass, but it is idea that has been floated out there.
  • On Friday, Prince Albert Minor Football cancelled all its spring programs due to the preventative measures that have been enacted by various governments to combat COVID-19. The sport body is still taking registrations for its fall programs.
  • On Friday morning, ESPN reported the XFL has suspended operations and laid off nearly all of its staff outside of a handful of executives and has no plans to return in 2021. The XFL suspended operations on March 12 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and officially cancelled the remainder of its season on March 20. The league is owned by WWE chairman/president Vince McMahon and Alpha Entertainment. The reboot was not the rowdy first version of the football circuit seen in 2001. The latest version of the XFL was operated as a new startup and had received lot of great reviews over the first five weeks of play. It appears theCOVID-19 pandemic might have stopped the rebooted XFL in its tracks, which is too bad.
  • It may sound crazy, but it is possible to like both the WHL’s Prince Albert Raiders and Saskatoon Blades. The teams are big rivals and just saying the above statement will likely have some fans of both teams fall out of their chairs.
  • Saskatoon Blades captain Chase Wouters took over his team’s Instagram account on Friday, and it was pretty fun. He provided numerous posts on the story function from his home Lloydminster, which is located on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan. He showed off his home gym, said how much he likes hear the Blades victory song “Tongue Tied” by Grouplove and showed a picture of his father, Scott, wearing #44 in a Team Canada jersey from Hockey Canada. Scott played for the Lloydminster Border Kings when they faced Poland’s National team in a three game series in Poland in October of 2001. Chase said he wears #44, because that was Scott’s old number. Scott talked about how fun it was to introduce the Blades starting lineup before a game this past season. Overall, Chase did a great job running the Blades Instagram line for a day.
  • It is a smart and prudent move to take a break from social media and limit the time you spend taking in information from news sites on various platforms. There is so much uncertainty and anxiety happening over the COVID-19 pandemic it becomes mentally unhealthy to spend too much time consuming information over those lines.
  • One of the most entertaining tweets I’ve found comes from Joe Pascucci, who is a longtime sportscaster and sports director in Winnipeg. He found a clip from an AWA championship match held at the Winnipeg Arena between champion Rick Martel and challenger Boris Zhukov. Martel was the baby face and Zhukov was the heel. John Ferguson, who was the general manager of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets at the time, was the special guest referee. Ferguson ensured the match was “fair” for Martel.
    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.
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