Elmira’s accident and Lewiston’s near-miss are two examples of junior hockey bus incidents. Here are a few more:

• Perhaps the most famous involved the Swift Current Broncos of the Western Hockey League. The team’s bus crashed Dec. 31, 1986, killing four players after running off a road in icy, snowy conditions on the way to Regina, Saskatchewan. Colorado Avalanche forward and future hall-of-famer Joe Sakic was aboard that bus.

• In 1974, the driver lost control of the Sherbrooke Castors’ bus in the Laurentides region of Quebec. One player, Gaetan Paradis, died when the bus went off the road.

• The Woodstock Slammers of the Maritime Junior A Hockey League (Woodstock, New Brunswick) ran into similar problems this tear on Prince Edward Island. They were on their way to Tignish to face off against the Charlottetown Abbies on Feb. 3 this year. Bob Vail, an assistant coach, was the most seriously injured and was airlifted to a Halifax hospital.

Close call for former Maineiac
Elmira Jackals team bus strikes truck, rolls over

Pierre-Luc Faubert earned his way back to the Lewiston Maineiacs last season by showing his tenacity, a deft goal-scoring touch and an ability to perform under pressure.

Early Thursday, Faubert survived the most trying experience of his young hockey career.

The bus carrying Faubert and his Elmira Jackals teammates struck the back of an 18-wheeler, careened off the side of Interstate 90 in Pennsylvania, went down an embankment and came to rest – upright – in a field alongside the highway.

“It was crazy,” Faubert said. “If we had been 50 feet before, it was really steep and we would have gone flying into trees, and 50 feet further, there was a metal (guardrail) and we probably would have flipped over.”

Elmira general manager Robbie Nichols said driver Kenneth Nance, 56, was trapped in the wreckage for two-and-a-half hours before he was freed and flown to Hamot Medical Center in Erie, Pa.

No one on the team was seriously hurt, though Nichols said Thursday that one player was going to be on crutches. In all, four players needed medical attention from the team physician.

Faubert was not among those injured.

“I was near the back of the bus,” he said. “What’s crazy was, there are mirrors all over that part of the bus, and they all shattered and glass went everywhere, but no one got cut or anything.”

The Jackals, the ECHL affiliate of the Columbus Blue Jackets, were returning home after a 7-1 loss Wednesday in Cincinnati. The accident happened at about 4:15 a.m., about 35 miles into Pennsylvania from the Ohio border, police said.

“We felt the bus jerk,” Faubert said. “Most of us were asleep. The bus went onto the side, where the road is bumpy (the rumble strip), and the driver turned hard to get back on the highway. I heard him swear at himself. After that, we all went back to sleep. About a half-hour later, we were going faster and hit the back of a truck that was going about 65, and we hit it hard. We went right into the ditch, but we got lucky and didn’t hit anything else.”

Hitting close to home

The crash is similar to a near-miss the Maineiacs had earlier this season on the road to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“We almost ran up the backside of an 18-wheeler,” Maineiacs’ head coach Ed Harding said. “I yelled down to (the bus driver). I was a bit concerned.”

Getting no response, and seeing what he called a “death grip” on the wheel by the driver, Harding stepped in.

“We were starting to drift off the road; by that point, we’d already gone over the rumble strip,” Harding said. “I reached down and kind of straightened the wheel out, and I said to him, ‘Get your foot off the gas pedal.'”

The driver’s foot did come off the pedal a bit, and the bus started to slow. Harding told the driver not to touch anything, and the bus eventually slowed to a crawl. Harding yelled for Maineiacs’ athletic therapist Tom Bourdon, who reached over and put the bus in neutral. They applied the parking brake and took care of the driver, who was admitted to a hospital.

“Our biggest concern at that point was making sure our bus driver was OK,” Harding said.

The Maineiacs were lucky, Harding said. There was still daylight, the team was on a long stretch of straight road, and they were on a highway.

“There were a lot of factors in our favor,” Harding said.

Way of life

As long as there is minor hockey – or minor, junior or semiprofessional sports in general – there will be scores of teams traveling to and from their next venues on buses.

“Nothing is 100 percent safe,” Maineiacs’ president and governor Matt McKnight said. “Busing, in this league and in many others, is the only option. Most of the towns we play in don’t have sufficient airports, or even have an airport at all.”

Harding has been here before, too.

In Tulsa, where he coached the Crude of the USHL, Harding recalled being on the team bus when it crashed through a toll booth.

“We were slowing down a bit, but not enough,” Harding recalled. “We had to have scared the hell out of the people inside taking money. We scraped both sides of the booth as we went through.”

The coach has resigned himself to the fact that bus travel will be a way of life at lower levels of sport.

“I’ve traveled so many bus miles in the last several years, you get used to it,” he said. “Even when I was younger, playing in the ECHL (Harding skated for the Johnstown Chiefs), I didn’t like the fact that someone else had control over my body. But you get used to it. I always have an eye on the road in front, just in case.”

Faubert, meanwhile, has the unenviable task of getting ready for his team’s next game, which isn’t until Wednesday, Dec. 5.

And it’s a home game.

But the team has to travel that same stretch of I-90, back to Cincinnati, on Dec. 6, for a two-game series.

“It’s going to be a lot harder to sleep on the bus now,” Faubert admitted, “but I’m sure we’ll find a way.”