DETROIT _ The accident that killed 14 people and injured 14 other members of a Canadian junior hockey team struck a chord with the Detroit Red Wings.
Anthony Mantha thought back to his days in juniors, riding busses to and from games with Val-d'Or.
"When you are on your bus with your teammates, you play games, you play cards, you don't really pay attention to the roads," Mantha said Saturday. "Some guys are sleeping, probably.
"Just thinking about it makes me sick a little bit."
Members of the Humboldt Broncos were on the bus en route to a playoff game when there was a collision with a semi truck on Friday night in northeastern Saskatchewan.
"I want to pass on my thoughts and my prayers to the families of the Humboldt hockey team and the community, the entire province of Saskatchewan," coach Jeff Blashill said. "I spent lots of time up there recruiting in my time and I know how much that junior league is a fabric of that province. I'm a father. I can't imagine what they are going through.
"It's a tragic, tragic, tragic, tragic thing."
Mantha recalled being on a bus going through a wooded area during a snowstorm and seeing "four cars in a ditch one road trip." He planned to donate to an online fund set up to help the families.
"It's hard to hear," Mantha said. "I looked at Twitter this morning; I think there are 14 dead and 14 still in hospital. Hopefully they get out of there with decent health."
Tyler Bertuzzi recalled a frightening moment during his junior days.
"There was a snowstorm and our bus did a fishtail, but we were lucky enough to stay on the highway," he said. "It's scary. In the OHL, there's a lot of snow in a lot of the cities and you're driving through the night after games, you don't stay in hotels, so you are always on the road. It's tough to hear and I am praying for their families."
Until players make it to the top levels of hockey, taking a bus for road trips is daily fare. Even NHL teams still do it to some extent _ like the Wings when they go from Los Angeles to Anaheim, Calif.
"Teams around the world in every league, you go by bus," Gustav Nyquist said. "It's part of being on a team. A lot of team bonding happens on a bus. It's kind of your safe zone, that's what it feels like when you are on there. It's just so terrible what happened. Even the people that did survive, being a part of something like that, losing so many friends. It's tough."
