A voice silenced
Broadcasters share in the grief over the loss of one of their own
For several years, Winnipeg broadcaster Brian Munz sat at the front of the bus, right next to the coaches, as the Humboldt Broncos travelled around Saskatchewan for hockey games.
He was living the dream, calling games on a regional radio station for his hometown team in his first play-by-play job, a gig that would eventually lead him to the NHL, where he works on Winnipeg Jets’ broadcasts.
On Saturday, he was sharing in the grief of both his hometown and the hockey world after a tragic accident took the lives of 15 people from the Broncos organization, including a young broadcaster named Tyler Bieber.
When a semi-trailer T-boned the Broncos bus on Friday, Bieber would have been seated near the point of impact, at the front, along with coach Darcy Haugan, who was also killed.
“We were on a road trip last week out east and I listened to Tyler do one of the games,” Munz said. “I listened to the third period of one of their playoff games. You hear how excited everybody is with the broadcast and what’s going on with the team that they were able to get to the final four in the league … and then you get the call last night that (15) are gone and you feel for everyone.
“It’s hard to explain. I got the call 10-15 minutes after it happened and it’s just kind of occupied every minute since.”
Munz still has strong ties to Humboldt and the Broncos organization. His family moved there in 1993 and he went to high school in the town of 6,500.
He hosted the Broncos Hall of Fame dinner last June and was friendly with some of the players. He was also familiar with the stretch of highway where the accident happened.
“I’ve driven that road probably 500 times and that’s not an exaggeration,” Munz said. “As soon as I got the call that there was an accident and was told where it was, I could pretty much paint you a picture.”
The accident sent shock waves through hockey communities across the country. So many people can identify with the situation and can only hope something like this never happens to their loved ones.
“Just thinking about how tragic it is for the families,” Munz said. “They send their 16- 20-year-old kids off to a small town in Saskatchewan that’s got such a rich hockey tradition and you just want to be a part of the aura of the Humboldt Broncos and today, they’re one of the biggest sports tragedies that our country has ever seen.”
Another Jets broadcaster, play-by-play man Paul Edmonds, got his start in the Western Hockey League, doing colour commentary for Swift Current Broncos broadcasts and calling games for the Regina Pats in the 1990s. He arrived in Swift Current five years after four players were killed when the Broncos team bus slid off an icy highway in 1986.
It’s the kind of tragedy that never leaves a community.
“There wasn’t a time that I didn’t get on that bus and think of those four players that had passed away,” Edmonds said. “There’s an area in the arena where they’ve immortalized the players and you see that every time you walk by. It’s around you all the time. You couldn’t just go to Swift Current and not think about it.”
Edmonds immediately thought back to the Swift Current tragedy on Friday when he heard the news about Humboldt, and eventually learned this accident was on a whole new level of devastation.
“Essentially half a team is gone,” he said. “Here we are with these kids who are just so young, and teenagers and their future and lives were so much ahead of them. To have it end so tragically and quickly is just so sad.”
Edmonds spent years riding the buses with the Winnipeg Goldeyes baseball team and he, Munz, and Jets TV playby-play man Dennis Beyak — who also worked for years calling junior hockey games and working as an executive in the WHL — all travel regularly with the Jets on the road. All that travel doesn’t seem so routine today.
“The buses are still part of hockey, always have been and always will be,” he said. “You think about what happened in Humboldt and about how lucky you are to continue to roll along.”
The truth is, there are not going to be many people in Canada who won’t be touched by this accident.
“There’s big fraternity that is affected by this because of how deep hockey runs in our country,” Edmonds said.