Olds Grizzlys interim head coach Joe Murphy has been on the phone with players, offering them support and a chance to air their feelings in the wake of Friday's tragic Humboldt Broncos bus crash which claimed the lives of 15 people and injured 14.
A semi-trailer and the bus collided as the bus was on its way to Nipawin, Sask. for a Junior A hockey playoff game.
Murphy told the Albertan those phone conversations have been tough -- especially with goaltender Sam-Jaxon Visscher, who was traded to the Grizzlys earlier this season for defenceman Cale Cripps.
When interviewed, Murphy had not yet been able to get a hold of Cripps, as he was working. But he did get a hold of Visscher.
"It's a tough -- he played there for a year-and-a-half, so he's deeply connected with those guys," Murphy says. "The conversation is, he doesn't know quite how to process it all. When it's this fresh, you don't try and pry anything out, you just let them know that there's support here.
"He wasn't offering up a whole bunch of feelings, but that's part of it too," he adds. "You've got to make sense of it in some ways, to express. It's a tough thing."
Murphy began contacting players as soon as he could.
"I just started the conversation to figure out if kids needed help. That's just what we were trying to do with that. It just started off with a little text and then some followup to see how guys are doing," he says.
"I've spoken to a handful of them. I've not made contact with all of them, but they all know that the Grizzlys are here for them.
"The general theme has been it's a weird time. We all spend so much time on the bus. Hockey is a very small world. If you don't know somebody directly involved, you're really only one or two degrees away from it," Murphy adds.
"So I think it's disbelief. It's almost in a weird way, they know it's happened, they don't even know what to think in some cases yet. It's a tough time for people to kind of make sense of it all. I think that's the biggest theme, is how do you even start understanding (it), which is what everyone goes through."
Murphy says the big point is accidents like this are bigger than sports.
"This has nothing to do with hockey," he says. "It's about human beings."
Murphy says Grizzlys management plans to meet today (Tuesday, April 10) to decide how they'll respond to the tragedy in an official way. For example, whether they'll hold some kind of public meeting or memorial, or have patches made for players to wear next season in honour of the Broncos.
He says there'll likely also be some discussion about what the team can do to support the Broncos, as well as parents and that community in general.
In the meantime, he plans to continue contacting as many Grizzlys players as possible -- right through the entire roster -- to give them the support they need.
"We talk about it with mental health all the time, the stigma with asking for help, but it's a lot easier to ask for help when you know the avenues to find it, so that's what we're trying to provide," he says.
Murphy agrees it will be difficult for players -- and others -- to get back on a bus next season in the wake of this crash.
"I think that is certainly one of the minefields we're certainly going to have to get through," he says. "You know, you don't often think about your daily activities too much until somebody else's regular daily activities are impacted in this way.
"It'll be an adjustment. There'll be anxieties, I'm sure. I'm feeling them, you know, and I'm 43 years old and I've lived a lifetime on a bus through hockey. It's something that's -- it's there.
"I've had this conversation with my wife 15 times since this whole thing happened. Yeah. There'll be some things to get through, for sure," he says.
Murphy has his own connection with the tragedy.
He played against the team's head coach, Darcy Haugen, who was one of those killed.
"I played against Darcy in a number of leagues: Alberta Junior 1, in college as well. I spoke to Darcy in January of this year when we were talking about some players," he said.
"It's just the magnitude of this. You know so many people who do have direct connections," he said. "That is the strength of the hockey community, but when something like this happens, you know what? You're in hockey, you're affected, so you're working through it."
