(File photo/northeastNOW)

By Logan Lehmann

Humboldt Broncos

Former SJHL broadcaster reflects on fifth anniversary of Broncos bus crash

Apr 6, 2023 | 8:00 AM

It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since the crash that rattled a community, province, country, and the hockey world.

Thursday marks the fifth anniversary of the tragic Humboldt Broncos bus crash that took the lives of 16 and injured 13 others, all of whom were on the bus.

Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news. Some were driving home from work while others were making supper.

For current Prince Albert Raiders play-by-play announcer Rob Mahon, he was stepping off the Estevan Bruins bus after their playoff road trip.

“It was strange, we had just gotten off the bus ourselves,” he said. “We were coming back from the Battlefords with the Estevan Bruins after Game Five in that series. I just finished unloading the bus, I’ve been back at my apartment for a little while, I left my phone on the changer in my room, went to the kitchen to do something and when I came back, I picked up my phone and there was a message from one of the assistant coaches that just said, ‘Guys, Humboldt has been in a crash and it’s bad.’”

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In the days following, light began to shed on the severity of the crash with victims being identified and photos of the crash beginning to circulate online.

The Humboldt Broncos bus crash site the following day after the accident. (980 CJME).

Just over a week later, the SJHL Playoffs would continue into the finals where the Bruins met the Nipawin Hawks, the team that the Broncos were traveling to play when the crash happened. Playing in Nipawin at the Centennial Arena, Mahon said that he’s never seen that arena that full in all the years he covered the Bruins.

“Normally as a media guy, it’s you and one other guy covering a game,” he explained. “This time around, it was me, there was somebody from paNOW, people from TSN and Sportsnet, CTV, CBC, news crews with cameras. I’m sure some of these people who are working in Toronto or Edmonton these days, hadn’t been to an SJHL game in years if they ever have, but you had some of the biggest media names in the country jammed into Nipawin’s Centennial Arena.”

Players and coaches alike in junior hockey travel almost exclusively by bus, logging hundreds if not thousands of hours traveling from place to place to play over the course of a season. In the SJHL, it’s no different with the bus being a place where teammates and staff can bond with one another and create relationships.

When word got out about the accident, Mahon reflected on the time he spent on a bus over his play-by-play career.

“The bus is a relatively free place,” he said. “Guys spend time talking with each other, snoozing, playing cards or video games in some cases and it’s a time for the team to be together and its rarely interrupted by anything bad, even though everyone knows you go on the road and something bad could happen. To have something like that happen affected everyone on that bus because everyone had been on a bus just like it, even on that very road.”

Since the crash, the Broncos have been in a rebuild and have been successful in doing so, appearing in the playoffs every season since while also making the semi-finals the past two years.

This past season, the Broncos finished the regular season second in the SJHL with 81 points and a 40-15-1-0 record.

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logan.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @lloganlehmann