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Bruins road trip an unforgettable experience

The chance to go on the road with the Power Dodge Estevan Bruins for their first Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League final appearance since 1999 seemed to be far too tempting to pass up.
Dylan Lafrentz
Bruins head athletic trainer Dylan Lafrentz places one of the special decals on the Bruins’ truck in Tisdale on April 13.

The chance to go on the road with the Power Dodge Estevan Bruins for their first Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League final appearance since 1999 seemed to be far too tempting to pass up.

Not only was this the chance to see the team in a very unfamiliar setting in the recent history of the franchise, the Bruins would be going past the crash site where 16 people were killed in the Humboldt Broncos bus tragedy, temporarily putting the brakes on the 2018 playoffs. Within days, it was announced the playoffs would go on, with the Bruins playing the other semifinalist Nipawin Hawks, starting April 14 and 15 in Nipawin.

Because the Bruins had a lot of affiliated players on the bus going with them and most of the assistant coaches didn’t want to miss the chance to be with the players as that happened, I was tasked with driving one of the two trucks the Bruins have up to Nipawin Friday with the team bus. (Saturday, members of the team would use one of those trucks to go to the funeral of Darcy Haugan, the head coach and general manager of the Broncos.)

The team would be leaving Friday at 11 a.m. to have lunch in Regina. But before that, as the Bruins were loading equipment on the bus, it was easy to see how the team had already captured the imagination of Estevan. Lineups going around the lobby were seeing people pony up for tickets for Games 3 and 4.

“We’re going to sell out in two hours,” Bruins assistant coach and director of operations Carter Duffin said, missing only by a couple of hours.

On the road (missing 11 a.m. by only about 45 minutes), my truck and the one driven by Duffin were a fair way behind the bus, but we eventually caught up to them at lunch in Regina after a stop at a sporting goods store.

With a very quick pizza at Fortuna on Scarth Street, the team was leaving when assistant coach Jeff Smith called out ‘Hey, Hengen’, to Bruins overage defenceman and local product Tyler Hengen.

Hengen stopped out of the line of players and went up to Smith.

“I just wanted to see if you could hear me from that distance,” Smith grinned, implying that sometimes on the ice Hengen might not have.

Lengthy bus trips and coach-player relationships are full of subtle joshing, occasional needling and male bonding. This is the way it’s been since buses have been used to transport teams and possibly before that.

“You didn’t go to the store yet did you?” Bo Didur asked Duffin. Nodding, Didur reacted like you may have told him his cat was missing.

Didur needed new socks before the games. Hockey socks are a different kind of sock than most socks you’ll ever wear and the ones Didur was wearing were apparently holey.

Moments later, just as Austin King-Cunningham and Jerzy Martin sprinted back to the bus, it momentarily made one think about the friendships gained in hockey. King-Cunningham and Martin are from different countries, play different positions and started last season in different organizations. But there they were, united by hockey and circumstance.

The team moved northward from Regina and I had determined to myself that I was going to follow the bus directly. By the time we all had arrived in Tisdale, the mood had become a little bit more serious. Members of the coaching staff and head athletic trainer Dylan Lafrentz were putting up special Humboldt decals on the trucks and the bus.

Once on the road again, the drive became less about getting to the destination quickly and more about the moment. It still seemed like it took zero time between the outskirts of Tisdale and the crash site.

RCMP and the Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure had blocked off the intersection from all four sides while the Bruins took their chance to visit the site.

An unseasonably cold chill filled the air as the players came off the bus, each with flowers they’d pre-ordered and picked up in Tisdale.

After their time there, the bus and trucks moved solemnly into Nipawin.

For the Saturday morning skate, the Bruins moved nearly wordlessly through their drills with a focus on the task at hand in an unafamiliar rink.

Nipawin is a small city of about 4,400 people. Largely immune from the ups and downs of most of the provincial economy, it’s stayed at its population for much of the last few decades but has seen a slow, steady rise over the last decade. Its economy is largely based on tourism, based on the amount of fishing and hunting-related activities during those seasons.

It’s a city that took until about 10 or 11 years ago to get its first and only Tim Hortons. It’s a city where everyone knows everyone else in a way that’s far more intimate than what some may find comfortable.

Their rink, the Centennial Arena, is loud. Louder than loud, in fact. The ‘Cage’, as it’s reverentially referred to, can hold up to 1,200 people – or about 800 comfortably. It’s boxy, fans are closer to the players on the steep seats, and very, very, loud. With the warmups starting Saturday, the standing room along the glass on both ends was already filling up.

And the horns, they’re blowing that sound. At random intervals before the game and in intermissions, both the car horns in the corners (as well as one or two in the stands) would go off as a sort of greeting to each other. By the time the teams hit the ice for the pre-game ceremony Saturday, the rink was about the decibel level of a dozen flocks of caffeinated geese getting ready for takeoff.

The horns go off for goals and big hits by the Hawks, hits by the Bruins that fans don’t like, and Bruins penalties. Also, they go off randomly. Fans are given the chance to pick up earplugs at the front. It’s not a bad investment. 

If hockey was healing, though, this was the place to play it. A rivalry between the teams was struck up within moments as the hits and chirping between players began within moments of the first responders leaving the ice. 

The Bruins won that first game. Hawks general manager and head coach Doug Johnson pointed out his team has had a difficult time getting rest and nutrition in the past week, possibly leading to a bug going through his dressing room.

No matter how old you are, though, it’s got to be weird to be talking to people like me for most of the season and then all of a sudden dealing with tragedy, and days later national and provincial television personalities are regularly asking how you’re holding up.

After Game 1, one of the dressing rooms at the Cage was turned into a makeshift media room. Johnson was first to the podium and looked at the cameras, uttered an expletive while shaking his head before sitting down to answer questions. If there’s an old school where they churn out SJHL bench bosses, Johnson graduated magna cum laude.

Bruins head coach and general manager Chris Lewgood, on the other hand, came politely, answered questions without expressing awe at the amount of media attention.

Whatever was bugging Johnson’s team Saturday didn’t seem to bother them Sunday as the Hawks held the Bruins off the scoresheet most of the game.

The mood in the Bruins’ room was that of disappointment (and it took convincing from Raihan Kheraj to one of the security guys to let me near the dressing room) but it was clear the Bruins didn’t feel like they were done in the playoffs. The effort would be better, more consistent and they wouldn’t allow frustrations to get the better of them.

On the road back to Estevan Monday, the road went quicker as I was in a truck with Duffin, Smith and Rock 106’s Rob Mahon. Duffin made no less than a dozen calls trying to make sure things were going to go smoothly for the games Tuesday and Wednesday.

For those uninitiated, the trip took forever and the four days away from home seemed like forever. But the Bruins would have to pack up again for April 20’s game in Nipawin and perhaps even April 24 as well if the series were to go seven games. 

Maybe it’s not always like this. Maybe the games won’t always be thought of as the most important games in SJHL history.

But the 30 coaches, players and staff on the Bruins bus that travelled to Nipawin, took a trip by one of the worst mass casualties in decades in the province, faced a media storm unlike any other SJHL finalists, won one of two games in a noisy, packed, old-school rink and came back with a lifetime’s worth of memories. How did you spend April 13-16, 2018?