Swift Current Tragedy: 25 Years Later

These four gentlemen you see in the picture above are remembered for a tragedy that happened 25 years ago yesterday.  Trent Kresse, Scott Krueger, Chris Mantyka, and Brent Ruff were on the bus that was carrying the Swift Current Broncos squad to Regina for a game against the Pats that evening when the bus hit a patch of ice and eventually crashed.  The four players were killed in that crash, and the events of that evening are still remembered by Brian Costello, who had been covering the team.  His article on Yahoo vividly tells the story from that fateful day, as well as the changes to specific people on that bus as well, which included Joe Sakic, who will be a Hall of Famer as soon as this October, Sheldon Kennedy and then coach Graham James, both of whom are prominent names in the sex abuse scandal that implicates James in a series of sexual abuse against some of his former players that included Kennedy and Theoren Fleury.  A sad irony in the crash is that almost 25 years later, a plane crash in Russia would claim the lives of the entire Yaroslavl Lokomotiv team.  May the souls lost in both incidents rest in peace and their families find solace in knowing that those lost in the tragedies live on with the legacies left behind.