BRONCO UNBROKEN
Ryan Straschnitzki’s new life
Today: Straz Strong — From Tragedy Comes Tenacity
Friday: A Family United — New Realities for All
Saturday: Another Shot — Looking to the Future It’s been almost one year since Ryan Straschnitzki was paralyzed in the horrific Humboldt bus crash that killed 16 people. Postmedia Calgary journalist Sammy Hudes and photojournalist Leah Hennel have spent time with Ryan regularly since that life-altering day. A special threepart report begins today. The road stretched out on the long trek north, the prairie sky as wide open as Ryan’s Straschnitzki’s future on a late August day in 2017.
Cruising past farmland and fast food rest stops, the 18-year-old and his dad Tom were making the fourhour trip north to Whitecourt, a town about 180 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, for Ryan’s first training camp with the local Junior A squad, the Wolverines.
Ryan was determined to make the team out of training camp. Not only would it fulfil the next step of his hockey journey, Whitecourt offered the chance to play just a few hours up the road from home, where his family lived just north of Calgary in the community of Airdrie.
But the ride was interrupted, with a not-so-out-of-the-blue phone call from a coach in Saskatchewan.
The persistent coach felt Ryan belonged on his team, not on the Whitecourt roster, despite Ryan’s wishes.
“Well, if you make it (on the Whitecourt team), you’re not going to be there much longer,” the voice on the other end of the line predicted.
Those were the words of Humboldt Broncos head coach Darcy Haugan.
Ryan first caught Haugan’s eye four months earlier in Prince George, B.C.
His team at the time, the Leduc Oil Kings, was playing in the Telus Cup, Canada’s national midget championship tournament held annually each April, where dozens of young hockey hopefuls chase their athletic dreams.
Haugan had been there to scout another player. But while watching one of his games, the coach’s focus shifted. His eyes fixed on the right-shooting defenceman wearing No. 22 for Leduc.
Ryan had an MVP outing in one of the tournament matches, only further cementing his destiny as Haugan watched with intrigue. He wanted the young defenceman on his team the next year and nothing was going to stop him.
When the tournament ended, he phoned the Straschnitzki family to offer Ryan a spot. But Ryan chose otherwise, electing to stay in Alberta that fall. He made the Wolverines out of camp and was just three games into his rookie season when he got the news on Sept. 22, 2017. He phoned his parents to let them know he’d been traded.
“Yup, I’m heading to Humboldt,” Ryan said.
Six and a half months later, Haugan and 15 others were killed when the Broncos team bus collided with a semi-truck en route to their playoff game in Nipawin, Sask.
Ryan, one of 13 survivors, was paralyzed from the chest down.
Hockey was Ryan’s life back then. It had been for a while.
His goal was to play one more year in Humboldt and then try to stretch his career, perhaps even to the collegiate level in the U.S. through a hockey scholarship.
“As soon as he smells the ice, he’s excited,” says mom Michelle.
“He wanted to just take it as far as he could. Realistically, I don’t know if he would make the NHL; he doesn’t know, but he would have tried.”
A couple of NCAA Division I programs had already reached out during his first season in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League. “That was the plan,” Ryan says. But as he’s come to learn, plans change. You just roll with it.
It was nearly 15 years ago when Ryan took his first steps on the ice. His parents had him learn to skate when he was five and signed him up for hockey the next year.
Until the age of 19, when Ryan spent three months confined to a hospital recovering from the devastating injuries he sustained in the crash, you’d be hard-pressed to find any prolonged stretch of time in his life when he didn’t have a hockey stick in his hand every other day.
“Growing up, I just loved being on the ice,” he says. “It’s what I did constantly no matter what, even during the summer time. You shoot pucks, you play road hockey and it’s just the best thing.”
His love for the sport grew unconditionally.
But back when he was learning the ropes, it certainly didn’t start out that way for the young boy.
“He hated it. He did not want to do it,” Michelle recalls with a chuckle. “Tom would literally have to pick him up and throw him on the ice.”
“One day you’re gonna thank me,” Ryan’s dad would say.
“That took a while but eventually he’s like, ‘OK, I like this game.’”
Ryan rarely missed a game or practice, and never showed up late. His first coach recalls how Ryan was always at the front of a drill, leading by example with the smoothest skating skills on his team.
“Ryan just showed up every day and gave his best in every drill. He continued to improve throughout,” says Lance Johnston, who coached Ryan for four years in Timbits and novice, until the age of nine.
“Ryan was quiet. He didn’t have a lot to say, but when he said something it was well put. He was a good kid. We never had any problems with him, discipline problems or anything of that nature.”
Known as a young playmaker who could put the puck in the net, he could “easily do” what some of the other players at that age couldn’t, grasping any concept thrown his way.
In those formative years, Johnston says coaching is not just about teaching the game but also making sure the kids get along, absorb life skills and “play for each other.”
It was something Ryan clearly understood by the end of his first novice season.
Racing up the wing with the puck, late in the second-to-last game of the year, Johnston remembers Ryan driving towards the other team’s goal, with a wide open scoring chance.
But the seven-year-old then made a choice few kids would’ve; one that to this day, stands out to his former coach.
“We had one player that still hadn’t had a goal,” he says. “This boy’s never scored. Ryan’s cutting to the net ... and he passed it off to the other player. The player scored, and the place just went bananas. Ryan set him up. He knew what was going on more than a lot of the parents. The kid jumped over the boards and hugged all the coaches.
“Ryan made that happen.”
Ryan’s parents say they never knew he was such a good spokesman.
It’s something they only came to know recently, with Ryan thrust into the spotlight following the Broncos crash and serving as an inspiration to others across the country.
To them, much like to Johnston, Ryan was a low-maintenance, quiet kid.
Former teammates agree with that characterization, citing Ryan’s low-key demeanour in the locker-room and on the ice.
It’s what endeared him to his Broncos family when he first arrived in Humboldt, even though he didn’t know anyone else on the team except for Graysen Cameron of Olds (a town 90 kilometres north of Calgary), with whom he’d played hockey at the peewee level.
But Ryan quickly bonded with the rest of the boys, attached by their yellow and green uniforms on the ice and their common goal of proudly carrying on the storied legacy of their Saskatchewan junior hockey team.
Team veterans like Logan Boulet and captain Logan Schatz took the rookie, dubbed “Straz,” under their wing.
Still, those who have lined up for a faceoff with Ryan say that quiet, calm persona doesn’t paint a complete picture.
“He’s kind of a clown,” says Tyler Petrie, who played with Ryan in the Airdrie minor hockey system from the time they were in Grade 7 until their Grade 11 year.
Petrie, 19, describes Ryan as a team glue gun behind the scenes.
“(He’s) a jokester, and nothing ’s really changed,” says Petrie. “He’s always kind of joking around, keeping it light. He’s quiet until you get to know him, then he opens up.”
A happy and outgoing guy, Ryan’s “lively” personality was infectious, as he attempted to crack up his teammates as they would skate up the ice. He tried to look on the positive side whenever possible, “always trying to get the best out of every situation,” according to Petrie.
And then there’s that third side to him, which those following the often-told tale of his recovery have come to know well.
As Petrie says, Ryan’s determination and work ethic were never put in storage when the going got tough. It carried over to the classroom, where the two close friends attended W.H. Croxford High School in Airdrie.
“He works extremely hard at pretty much everything he does and he’s super passionate about most things,” says Petrie.
“We used to work out together in the summers for hockey and he would never miss. He would always be the hardest working one there usually. Even in the classroom, he was always studying and working hard.”
Thus, it was no surprise to Petrie when he learned that Ryan, badly injured in the Humboldt crash, set his sights very quickly on being a Paralympic sledge hockey player.
“It’s just who he is, I think.”
Growing up, I just loved being on the ice. It’s what I did no matter what, even during the summer time.
That crash is something Ryan tries not to think about as the one-year anniversary approaches on April 6.
Yet the details of the tragedy remain crystal clear in his mind, motivating him as he tries to move on and accept the path his life has taken.
Ryan was sitting on the left side of the bus, close to the middle row of seats that afternoon. Ryan was getting himself mentally prepared for the big game that evening, one that would decide whether the Broncos would hang on in the playoffs or go home.
He remembers texting his then-girlfriend, Erika Burns, before hearing a scream from the front of the bus.
“I kind of blacked out and woke up, however long later,” Ryan says. “My back was against the semi and I saw my teammates in front of me. My first instinct was to get up and try and help, but I couldn’t move my body.
“It was terrible.”
He could hear a ringing in his head, noises coming from everywhere, debris all around him on the pavement of the intersection. Then, of course, there was the pain.
Within minutes, Burns knew something was wrong when Ryan didn’t text goodbye, a normal sign-off ritual he’d do when his bus was almost at the arena.
She and a few other girlfriends of Bronco players were driving half an hour behind the team bus, on their way to watch the game.
Suddenly, Burns’s phone went silent and Ryan wasn’t answering.
When they reached the crash site, the group couldn’t see anything beyond a massive traffic jam and too many fire trucks to count. They were rerouted to a back road, which they took to Nipawin, unaware of who had survived the crash and who had not.
“It was a lot of waiting. Nobody knew any information and nobody was telling us anything,” Burns recalls. “So we ended up driving to Nipawin … and then basically waited to see what happened to the boys (and) where they were.”
Ryan’s family later told her which hospital he was taken to, so she could meet him there that night.
He remembers waking up and seeing her at his bedside.
“She was holding my hand and I asked her a bunch of questions she didn’t know the answer to; nobody knew the answer to,” Ryan says.
Ryan counts himself lucky — a few of his teammates that had been sitting near him on the bus didn’t make it. The official word wouldn’t come until the next day, but his disability was beginning to show.
It was already becoming clear to him that his life wouldn’t be the same. When he connected by phone with his parents that night, his recollection was still foggy. All he could say was he was sorry. Tom and Michelle were both confused. They asked him what he was apologizing for.
“I can’t feel anything,” he said. “I went, ‘Pal, I don’t give a sh-about that. You’re alive and we’ll focus on that,’ ” Tom says.
Michelle recalls Ryan also being sorry that his game was cancelled. He knew how much they were looking forward to it.
“He was just upset about that. He’s like, ‘I don’t know what happened exactly.’ He did know what happened, but he couldn’t remember at that point because he was pretty weepy.”
When he told Burns that he couldn’t feel his legs, she figured Ryan might just be in shock.
“A lot of stuff just happened. But when he actually told us that he was (paralyzed), it was really sudden,” she says. “It was like, ‘Everything ’s going to change now.’ It was a lot to take in and we weren’t even dating for that long.”
The couple had only been together for a month by that point, having met through teammate Layne Matechuk, a childhood friend of Burns.
In that one month, she says, she learned a lot about Ryan. He carried a “sassy ” personality, but also a strong sense of purpose.
“If he wants to do something, he’ll do it,” Burns says. “He is very strong-minded.”
In the months that followed, Ryan needed that resoluteness — a staple of his character, according to his teammates and coaches — more than ever before.
If he wasn’t mentally strong in those first tough months, he doesn’t know where he’d be.
Ryan says he doesn’t remember much from his first week in the ICU. As he lay in his hospital bed with minimal ability to move like he once did, visitors — ranging from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Edmonton Oilers star Connor Mcdavid — stopped by to let him know they believed in him and his fellow teammates.
Tributes poured in from across the country, with hockey players young and old putting their sticks outside the doors of their homes, and a record-breaking Gofundme campaign raising upwards of $15 million for victims and their families. It took a few weeks before realizing the magnitude of the crash, how its effect had travelled across the globe and how much support had been sent the team’s way.
But Ryan also had to adjust to the foreign idea that he wouldn’t be able to walk again. That he wouldn’t be able to skate again.
“Hockey’s such a big part of my life,” he says on a hot day last June, during a break from rehab at the Shriners Hospitals for Children — Philadelphia.
“At the beginning, when I knew that surgery wasn’t going to help, it was tough. Quitting the game is tough. It’s Canadian. You’re going to miss the sport.”
He admits he wondered back then what the point was, what the value of his life would be, if his legs didn’t work.
“It just gets to your head and just messes with you,” Ryan says. “Anyone can think ‘why?’ or ‘how come us?’ But it’s just the way life goes. I think everyone’s going to go through it. You just have to, over time, learn to accept it.”
It would take help to talk himself out of a negative frame of mind. Visitors like Rick Hansen, Canada’s “Man in Motion,” and his sledge hockey coach, Chris Cederstrand, helped him understand you don’t need to walk to succeed in life.
They helped him understand it’s not the end of the road.
“I hope to follow in their footsteps,” Ryan says. “I’ve met a lot of people who have gone through the same kind of situation, or even worse, and I look at their stories, and it kind of drives me to keep going.
“You learn a lot about a person when you take something away from them. When you’re kind of down and you look for inspiration, you look at those people and it helps push you forward.”
Ryan met the news media for the first time on April 25, 2018, five days after his 19th birthday and less than three weeks after the crash.
Wearing a No. 10 #strazstrong hat overtop his bleached hair (a team-bonding ritual during the Broncos playoff run), Ryan was wheeled by his dad into the lobby of Foothills Medical Centre, where he and his parents held court for the dozens of reporters and photographers waiting to hear him speak.
Tom whispered to Ryan that he hadn’t expected such an overwhelming turnout and offered Ryan the option of turning back.
Ryan would have none of it. They took time out of their day to talk to me, he replied, and the family took their seats.
Ryan told the media he was proud of his team and how close they’d always be. That he was proud to be a Bronco.
Tom said he was urging his son to keep his expectations tempered, to not get too far ahead of himself. Still, he was curious, just like everyone else, about what sort of recovery timeline Ryan was facing.
“We just take it, like I tell Ryan, shift by shift, so we’re still in the first period, fourth shift in. We still got a full game to go,” Tom said.
“You never know with this guy, it could be next week or it could be in four months.”
Despite becoming a known personality, and no matter what obstacles he’s facing, Ryan says he’s still the same person he was one year ago.
He still wants to be on the ice as much as possible, or watch his heroes face off in the pros.
With his friends, he likes to unwind with a friendly video game competition, or head to the mall like any other teenager.
Those tasks are, admittedly, a different experience than they used to be.
“Playing pond hockey with your siblings, you can’t really do that anymore,” he says, listing some of his daily frustrations.
Then there are routine activities, like showering or putting on his clothes each morning, which take far more time than they did previously.
Even events like the Calgary Stampede aren’t the same anymore.
“You see all the rides and stuff like that and you gotta watch other people go on it,” Ryan says.
But what ability he lost below his chest has been replaced by a feeling he now finds in his heart, having grown as a person and matured faster than any 19-year-old should ever need to.
His daily life is marked by reminders of those he lost, such as the Humboldt helmet he wears during sledge hockey practices or the cat he adopted. Ryan named it “Bronz” after Dayna Brons, the team’s fallen trainer.
“I think I’ve become a better person, honestly,” Ryan says.
“Before, being like a hockey player, you have that sort of swagger behind you and maybe (you’re) not always the most humble person.”
He stops to clarify: “I wasn’t cocky or anything, I was just kinda mellow, chill, but now I’m more cautious, just a lot ... nicer to people.”
Ryan adds he tries to be more humble, but also “careful” of how he treats people, from friends and family to strangers alike.
“Because you never know,” he says, “when the last time you’re going to see them is.”
Anyone can think ‘why’ or ‘how come us?’ But it’s just the way life goes … You just have to, over time, learn to accept it.