Tom Straschnitzki was wrangling his fussy youngest child when his iPhone buzzed. His hands full, Tom put the phone on speaker and heard the terrifying sound of his oldest son calling from a bus and screaming for help.
"Dad, you've got to help this time! You've got to save the boys! You've gotta help!" Ryan Straschnitzki pleaded.
"This is the life we have now," Tom Straschnitzki said. "And we're not going to let anyone cry for us." Straschnitzki was among 10 survivors at the NHL Awards last June in Las Vegas. Standing side by side in Humboldt jerseys they accepted the inaugural Willie O'Ree Community Hero Award for head coach Darcy Haugaan, who died in the crash.
The visitors for the Humboldt victims also included former junior hockey players who survived a similar bus crash in 1986. That new life starts with sled hockey -- known as sledge hockey outside the U.S. -- for players with physical disabilities. Players use two sticks, which have a spike-end for pushing and a blade-end for shooting. Former Team Canada national sledge player Chris Cederstrand coaches Straschnitzki at East Calgary Twin Arena. The recent stop at Shriners cleared him for contact, reigniting dreams of representing his country at the 2022 Winter Paralympic Games in Beijing.
Tom Straschnitzki puts down the Coors Light at the hotel bar and pulls out his iPhone to show the instant his family's life was turned upside down. He scrolls for a moment -- a small smile forms because a number for Bret Hart, the old WWE star and a childhood idol, is now in his contacts -- when he finds it: a screenshot of 4:58 p.m., April 6, when he lost connection with Ryan's phone through the location sharing app.
Ryan Straschnitzki remembers texting a friend when the bus was struck, and he was shot out a bus window and tossed to the pavement, where he was eventually found, face and arms bloodied. "You know what, I'm going to try sled, I'm going to try and make the team so we can maybe bring home the gold," Ryan told his dad.
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