Broncos meet, mingle, rub shoulders with NHL stars
It was Monday, early April, and Andrew Ference sent out a feeler.
How, he wondered, could he — and more specifically, NHL players and teams — help?
That query, propelled by shock, grief and helplessness, was directed to the Humboldt Broncos, whose bus crash at a highway intersection three days earlier caught the attention of the wider world.
Sixteen on that bus died, and 13 more were injured. Ference — a longtime NHL player who was recently hired as the NHL’S director of social impact, growth and fan development — knew help was needed.
But how to do it? Where to begin?
“He reached out,” says Tammy Robert with Takt Communications, which has handled the team’s communications since shortly after the crash, “and he’s been a rock ever since.”
Ference provided a sympathetic ear, a big shoulder and ideas. He’d offer guidance to NHL players and teams seeking ways to help; he’d work with the Broncos, try to ease their pain, just a little bit.
Sometimes outside groups, like the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, ask him what they can do, and he helps connect them to the right people.
“To be honest,” Ference said Tuesday after meeting with surviving Broncos players in Las Vegas, “most guys don’t know what to do. I’m sure like most people, you see something like that, and wonder what can I do? You saw the financial outpouring of support, but even that feels ineffective, because you know it’s more than that.”
Ference took the team out for supper Tuesday. Earlier in the day, a parade of NHL stars staged a meet-and-greet with the Broncos players, who looked genuinely happy to see them up close.
“We know it’s not anything perfect,” Ference said, “but as hockey players and as a league and as a union, we know hockey best. That’s our main language. That’s why bringing the (Broncos) around our top guys in the NHL ... there’s probably equal excitement to meet each other.”
Ference announced Tuesday that Humboldt is in for a big day on Aug. 24 — not only will Washington Capitals’ forward Chandler Stephenson take the Stanley Cup there, but a wide array of NHL players will arrive to mingle with the team and with the community.
They’ll do their thing both on and off the ice that day.
“They’re just hockey guys, you know? That’s the thing,” Ference said of the Broncos players, who he met for the first time Tuesday. “They went through something no one else has ever gone through, but at the end of the day, they’re still teammates and part of the hockey community. That defines them more than anything; they’re just one of the boys. And what’s what people connected with. You could relate to them more as human-beings more than relating to them based on the event.
“It’s a defining moment in your life, obviously. Everybody has certain moments that stick out, turning points in their life, big moments. Theirs is unprecedented as far as hockey goes, but at the same time, they’re human beings and hockey players. They have a longer story than just that.
“It’s nice to hear some of them already planning out the next stage of life. Even the boys with more severe injuries are looking forward — whether that’s talking about sledge hockey, or the day-to-day at the houses they’re renovating, or whatever it is. It’s all right to look back and remember and think about things, but it’s also nice to see and hear them looking forward and planning out what’s next.”
The Broncos will be honoured at Wednesday’s NHL awards banquet. They’ll walk the red carpet. They’ll be applauded by the NHL’S best players.
Ten of the 13 Broncos who survived that crash are in Las Vegas, at the NHL’S invitation. It’s a big thing, they know — the idea of this team reunion, and of this mingling with the best players in the game they love. Robert, with Takt, says the NHL has provided invaluable service to the team.
“If you needed anything,” she says, “they were there.”
Ference, who grew up near Edmonton and played in the Western Hockey League, riding buses from city to city, says he can’t relate to the crash. But he can relate to the hockey players in the crash.
“You saw the outpouring of love from other levels, whether it’s junior, minor-league teams, little towns across Saskatchewan,” Ference said. We’re just another part of that community, and wanted to do something good.”