Everybody cheers and sheds tears over Humboldt Broncos stirring return

The Elgar Petersen Arena set up for a vigil on April 8.

    Deep down, you knew you hadn’t shed your final tears over the Humboldt Broncos.

    A little over five months after a bus collision on April 6 claimed the lives of 16 players and team personnel, the Broncos returned to the ice Wednesday to host the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League’s regular season opening game against the Nipawin Hawks, who are the circuit’s defending champions. With the clash at the Elgar Petersen Arena broadcast nationally on TSN, it was a certainty the water works would come from anyone in any part of the world watching that game.

    In a really well-played junior A clash, the Broncos, who are under the guidance of new head coach and general manager Nathan Oystrick, scored first with a power-play goal coming from the stick of centre Michael Clarke at the 2:08 mark of the second period.

    Inside of the final 5:30 of the second, the Hawks received singles from Cole Beamin and Jeremy Bisson to go up 2-1. That score held up as the final outcome despite a Broncos golden last chance in the dying seconds of the third coming off the stick of Clarke following an offensive zone faceoff.

    Hawks star goalie Declan Hobbs made the stop, which was one of his 39 saves on the night. Broncos standout netminder Dane Dow played valiantly on the other end making 24 saves.

    For the community of Humboldt, everyone affected by the tragedy and the community at large all over the world whose hearts sank on April 6, Wednesday’s game was a big step forward in the healing process. That healing process still has an uncharted ways to go, but a new normal for the community of Humboldt just got a lot closer.

    When the Broncos and Hawks collide again in Nipawin on Friday, the Broncos players and coaches will be living a day-to-day life that more resembles the regular rigours of a hockey season. Regular routines will start to form again as the 2018-19 campaign progresses.

Humboldt Broncos jerseys became a common sight all over Saskatchewan.

    Between the April 6 crash and Wednesday’s game, most of the focus revolved around the daily news on how the families of the players and staff were dealing with the aftermath of the crash. The bus carrying the Broncos to play a Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League playoff game in Nipawin was involved in a collision with a semi-truck just north of Tisdale resulting in 16 deaths and 13 injuries on the bus.

    The world rallied to support the Humboldt players and staffers including a GoFundMe campaign that raised over $15.1-million with donations coming from over 141,900 individuals and entities in just under two weeks.

    It is crazy to think Humboldt residents Sylvie Kellington and Caitlin Hergott originally had the small goal of raising funds to cover parking costs for the families visiting hospitals with the GoFundMe campaign. Their efforts became the largest GoFundMe campaign ever in Canada and the third largest ever in the world.

    Wednesday’s contest provided another chance to heal and pay tribute to the 2017-18 Broncos, and that was done in spectacular fashion in front of an over capacity crowd of 1,998.

    Brayden Camrud and Derek Patter were the two survivors of the crash that returned to the team this season, and they took part in the opening faceoff. The ceremonial puck drop was performed by a large group of their teammates from a season ago who also survived the crash.

    Both Camrud and Patter played outstanding with Camrud recording an assist on Clarke’s power-play goal. While the game on the ice wasn’t the biggest focus on the night, it provided a great compliment to the rest of the festivities.

    Following the game, an emotional ceremony that lasted about 45 minutes was held to cap off the night. During the ceremony, 29 banners, one for every person on the Broncos bus, were unveiled and placed in a circle around centre ice.

    All the numbers worn by the Broncos players who were on the bus on April 6 were retired. Camrud and Patter will wear their numbers for the rest of the campaign, before those digits officially get taken out of circulation by the Broncos.

A back of a Humboldt Broncos jersey made to support those in the bus crash.

    On social media, people from all walks of life made uplifting comments on Twitter about what they saw from Wednesday’s game.

    Of course, no one will be able to bring back the players who dies in the bus crash in captain Logan Schatz, Adam Herold, Conner Lukan, Evan Thomas, Jacob Leicht, Jaxon Joseph, Logan Boulet, Logan Hunter, Stephen Wack or Parker Tobin. The same goes for head coach and general manager Darcy Haugen, assistant coach Mark Cross, play-by-play voice Tyler Bieber, stats expert Brody Hinz, athletic therapist Dayna Brons and bus driver Glen Doerksen.

    The crash survivors in Camrud, Patter, Graysen Cameron, Kaleb Dahlgren, Bryce Fiske, Xavier LaBelle, Matthieu Gomercic, Nick Shumlanski, Tyler Smith, Ryan Straschnitzki, Jacob Wassermann, Layne Matechuk and Morgan Gobeil will soldier on. Matechuk and Gobeil are still in hospital.

    As a collective, those 29 have shown the world it is possible to come together to heal and care and that everyone can be #HumboldtStrong.

Tonight was an incredibly emotional and beautiful tribute to the 2017-18 Humboldt Broncos. Thank you for all of your prayers, best wishes and support for the past 5 months. The “hockey family” has helped is through. It’s a great day to be a Bronco. pic.twitter.com/ILpKghXtyj

— Humboldt Broncos (@HumboldtBroncos) September 13, 2018

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

-------

    If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.

March's madness hits hockey Huskies

Despite "The Call," Canada West champs had a great season

Captain Kendall McFaull and goalie Jordon Cooke celebrate a win.

    For short time, “The Call” will be the dominant memory the University of Saskatchewan Huskies men’s hockey team and their supporters take away from the 2016 University Cup.

    “The Call” of course refers to the checking from behind penalty assessed to Huskies standout forward Levi Cable at the 16:27 mark of the third overtime period of a University Cup semifinal clash against the St. Francis Xavier University X-Men. On the ensuing power play, X-Men forward Michael Clarke laser beamed home the winning goal from the slot to the top corner on Huskies star goaltender Jordon Cooke with 2:25 to play in the third extra frame cementing a 2-1 result in favour of St. Francis Xavier.

    In that instant, the Huskies were knocked into Sunday’s bronze medal contest at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport national championship tournament held in Halifax, N.S. U of S took a 2-1 lead in that contest against the St. Mary’s University Huskies before fatigue really set in to allow St. Mary’s to skate away with a 5-2 victory. The green and white Huskies were forced to return home to Saskatoon with a fourth place finish.

    Sunday’s result was overshadowed by the events that led to Saturday’s heartbreaker.

    Cable was called for hitting from behind on a play that was a borderline small shove in the back at best. The infraction happened near the boards, which could have made it look at other angles worse than it was. During the three overtime periods, the officials let a lot of other things go that were visibly more serious infractions of the rules.

Levi Cable was given a weak OT penalty in Saturday's CIS semifinal match.

    The call on Cable was soft compared to those other infractions, and with both teams showing signs of fatigue, it gave the X-Men an edge at a critical moment to win the game. When the Huskies lost, it felt like they got cheated.

    Locally in the immediate aftermath in Saskatoon, the social media lines blew up with Huskies supporters showing their displeasure with the officials. If some of the supporters were team members of staff, they would be looking at getting sizable fines comparable to those level against former WHL Regina Pats general manager Brent Parker, when he used to voice his critiques of officials.

    The Huskies players, coaches and support staff will no doubt have to each deal with their own emotions regarding how the tourney played out before moving on.

    U of S was making its 17^th appearance at the University Cup, but this marked the first time the Huskies played in the event under an elite-eight single elimination format. This was the second year the University Cup was played under that structure, which helps produce “March Madness” style drama.

    The Huskies felt the lowest of lows in the semifinal, but for a time, they seemed destined to experience only highs.

Parker Thomas was an OT hero for the Huskies at University Cup.

    They finished first in the Canada West conference with a 22-6 record and won all four of their games in the Canada West playoffs to capture a 17^th conference title according to information supplied by Michael P.J. Kennedy, who wrote two editions of a the history book on the Huskies men’s and women’s hockey teams.

    Powering the run of the Huskies men’s hockey team was an emotional push to honour the memory of alumni Cody Smuk, who passed away of cancer in late June of 2015. Smuk was a hard-working, team first, glue guy who was endearing to the Huskies and the community of Saskatoon.

    His number was retired before a home game on Oct. 24, 2015. All season, the Huskies warmed up at home all wearing Smuk’s #24 jersey, and they continued that tradition at University Cup. When they won the Canada West title at the ancient Rutherford Rink on March 5, they brought out Smuk’s parents, father Marty and mother Darla, and his fiancée Stephanie Vause to be part of the on-ice team picture.

    In their first game at the University Cup, the Huskies experienced another big high. Huskies forward Parker Thomas showed a beauty set of hands popping home the winning goal at the 6:11 mark of a fourth overtime period to allow U of S to down the Carleton University Ravens 3-2 back on Thursday. The match was longest game in the history of the University Cup lasting 116 minutes and 11 seconds.

    After one game, the Huskies had to be thinking the event’s single elimination format was a sweet deal.

The Huskies lost Michael Sofillas due to injury.

    The experience of all those cumulative highs made Saturday’s outcome that much tougher to digest. Anyone involved with the Huskies had to think what happened in the loss to the X-Men wasn’t real.

There were also other things that went wrong in the semifinal loss. In the first period, the Huskies lost sophomore forward Michael Sofillas to a preventable injury.

    Sofillas was skating through the centre ice zone in front of the penalty box area, when a roughing infraction to X-Men forward Brad Cuzner was about to expire. Cuzner got out of the box and nailed Sofillas, who was lost for the rest of the tournament.

    Off-ice officials should have had player safety in mind and waited a couple of seconds for Sofillas to skate by. Instead, the U of S forward was blindside by someone who appeared to emerge out of a wall. Sofillas couldn’t defend himself, because he had no chance to see Cuzner was coming.

    The Huskies also saw their 1-0 lead disappear in the second period, when Cuzner burned them with a short-handed breakaway goal created by a nice chip pass by linemate Steven Kuhn. Those little things ultimately make the difference in a sudden death game.

    The third team, the officials, did have their struggles on Saturday, and if you are honest, fatigue started to catch up with them the longer overtime went. They are human too.

    In the third overtime period, that fatigue started to show up in a handful of botched off-side calls, which should have been simple to make. Fatigue likely played a factor in how the officials saw the infraction they gave to Cable.

    Bad calls are always going to be part of sports. Bad calls are also going to happen in critical moments of playoff games.

    These days, officials do more off-ice work than they ever have before with video, and the three-overtime semifinal contest involving the U of S was likely a big learning experience for them.

The Canada West title win will highlight the 2015-16 Huskies season.

    In the end, the Huskies have to live with what happened at the University Cup. Over time, the players, coaches, support staff and supporters will find ways to deal emotionally with the University Cup outcome.

    The X-Men didn’t have a championship ending to their University Cup experience either falling 3-1 in the final to the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds.

    While the University Cup didn’t return to Saskatoon for the first time since 1983, the Huskies had one of their most memorable years in 2015-16. The biggest memories were created by the day-to-day journey of the season and the celebration of a Canada West title win at home over their forever rivals the University of Alberta Golden Bears.

    It was a season that started without any lofty expectations and truly did honour Smuk’s memory. A bad call in a sudden death semifinal game will ultimately not erase the good that was accomplished.

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.