For the love of the game. Call it just one of the dozen baseball movies featuring Kevin Costner. Call it a rationalization of the seemingly absurd amount of time and effort we put into sports. Call it going to extreme lengths to humanize the athletics we immerse ourselves in so as to justify an otherwise suffering social life. What that saying is, in this instance anyway, is pretty much the only way to describe how long bus rides, that - in and of themselves - are typically terrible, become unforgettable bonding experiences upon being shared with teammates. I'm not going to lie to you. It's a sad truth that I'm not proud of, but I've become at least mildly desensitized to almost every disastrous event in which the mass casualties are those that had full lives left to live. Maybe the prominence of school shootings, the all-too-familiar details that generally surround them, and the shameless politicizing that tends to follow just blend together in a hodgepodge of horrific, but - for whatever reason - the nauseating news of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash packed much more of a gut punch. That doesn't make it any more or less of a tragedy obviously, but - for everyone that grew up looking forward to cramming themselves into a restricted mode of transportation that they were sure to turn into an adolescent playground for hours on end - this one hit closer to home. Oddly enough, seeing as a considerable amount of time on it was spent in anything but a secure position, the team bus has always been a bit of a safe haven of unsophistication. A sanctuary on wheels, if you will. The family, friends, and remaining members of a proud junior hockey organization can no longer think of it that way and that's almost an unimaginable feeling for everyone that can all-too-easily go back in time and put themselves in the carefree skates of the injured or deceased. While propping up a stick on the porch is a small showing of solidarity with a group of young men that, whether they are still with us or not, just eternally became a team for all the wrong reasons, it's actually the perfect one. To almost any hockey player, the only thing as relatable as leaning a twig up against a house, or a garage, or a basement wall, or a locker room, or the boards, or anywhere else where it is easily accessible if literally any handheld object is just begging to be toe-dragged is casually launching it into the luggage compartment of a Greyhound so as to get in another couple of seconds messing around in a way that turns teammates into friends and friends into family. I'm not even sure how anyone could feel entirely comfortable doing the latter as of yet, but the former serves quite the remembrance of a group of kids who were just trying to live an eerily familiar dream when, out of absolutely nowhere, it became a nightmare. The unbelievable support and the inspirational stories that have come of this catastrophe serve as formidable band-aids, but nothing can quite patch the hole left in Saskatchewan's heart and the hockey community's soul...
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