Hockey players are referred to sometimes as having bus legs after lengthy trips to their destination.
They’ve got nothing on the Edmonton Northeast zone peewees.
By the time they rolled into town to play in the Prince George Citizen peewee Tier 1 tournament on Friday they’d already spent 22 hours on the team bus.
Delayed for nearly a full day by a fatal accident at about 4 p.m. Thursday which claimed the life of a man, the team 10-12-year-olds arrived at the Kin Centre at about 11:50 a.m. Friday. They had less than an hour to get into game mode to play Kamloops, having already missed their scheduled morning game with the Kamloops team.
Where the accident occurred on Highway 16 near Moose Lake, west of Jasper, is on part of the road too narrow for the bus to turn around, and where there was no cell service. Parents of one of the players returned to Jasper and called other parents already in Prince George to relay the news that the team would be spending the night sleeping in the bus.
Fortunately, they had stopped for supper before they left Jasper and had snacks on the bus to keep up their energy reserves for their games Friday.
Edmonton lost 17-2 to Kamloops and went on to drop their second game 16-1 to Spruce Grove.
“Alberta Hockey is structured a bit differently than us and they’re in a different division and I don’t think they really knew what they were coming to,” said Laursen.
Parents of the host Prince George Viking Construction Cougars saw the Edmonton players stretched out chairs in the Kin Centre between games, some of them trying to catch up on their sleep and went out and bought each player a blanket to provide them some comfort while waiting for their game against Spruce Grove Friday afternoon.
“I think we just felt it would be a nice gesture to welcome them and show them some Prince George hospitality,” said tournament chair Pam Laursen, whose son Kaleb Miller is a goalie for the Cougars. “They had a rough go the last day or so with an uncomfortable sleep and now they can have a comfy sleep tonight.”
“This will probably be their adventure of the season.”
This is the first time in three years Prince George has hosted a tournament for its Tier 1 peewee team. The previous two years they were unable to convince enough teams to come to the city. The Spruce Grove team left for Prince George earlier Thursday and avoided the accident scene.
Viking won its opening game against Spruce Grove 8-2 Friday morning and played Kamloops Friday night in a rescheduled game at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
”We’re pretty happy about that,” said Laursen. “We actually traveled to Alberta couple times early in the season and it seemed to work because that’s where we recruited our teams from. “We’re just very thankful for the community, Prince George has pretty strong community support.”
Edmonton Northeast is staying downtown at the Marriott Courtyard hotel and they were not charged for the rooms they booked for Thursday night.
The tournament resumes today at 9 a.m. when Spruce Grove meets Kamloops at Kin1, followed by the Prince George-Edmonton game at 11:15 a.m., also at Kin 1. The second- and third-place teams then play each other in a semifinal at 3:30 and the first-versus-fourth semifinal follows at 5:45, both at Kin 1.
On Sunday, the two semifinal losers meet for bronze at 9 a.m. at Kin 1 and the championship game is set for 12:15 p.m. at Kin 2.
