B00ADOAFYO EBOK by Leesa Culp, Gregg Drinnan, Bob Wilkie

to play and prove myself. I guess Graham had his reasons.… I don’t think Graham knew what he wanted in a goalie.”
    As Christmas approached, Crockett made plans to return to British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, where he would spend the holidays with his family. He knew Joe Sakic — a Burnaby, British Columbia, native — from Lethbridge training camps and from Sakic’s minor hockey career on the Lower Mainland. So Crockett caught a ride with Sakic to Calgary, and the two of them flew west to spend some holiday time with their families.
    When it came time to return to Swift Current, however, Crockett missed his flight because, he said, he “was delayed at home.” In the end, he chose not to go back at all. Instead, he played for the junior B Burnaby Bluehawks of the West Coast junior league.
    Still, when the Swift Current Sun printed a list of accident survivors, Crockett’s name somehow ended up on it, although he wasn’t even in the city. According to Crockett, when some people heard reports of a sixteen-year-old having died in the bus crash, they thought it was him. Of course, it would turn out to have been forward Brent Ruff.
    Crockett learned of the accident from his girlfriend’s parents. At first, he says, he didn’t believe the news. And then he became quite upset — after all, these were his buddies. He may not have been a part of the Broncos, but he had spent some time with them and he knew most of the players. He was, he says, particularly fond of Chris Mantyka. Crockett remembers Mantyka weighing in for training camp.
    “I remember thinking, Who’s that Fu Manchu? He’ll never make it. But then Chris got on the ice and kicked the snot out of three guys. Off the ice, he was the nicest guy.” Crockett also remembers Mantyka’s trademark: “He would put his elbow pads on loose so that if he got into a fight he could easily pull them off and throw them at his opponent, and while his opponent was trying to pull them off his face to see, he could beat the guy up.”
    Even though Crockett never played for the Broncos, he remembers the feeling he got from being part of the team, even for such a brief time.
    “They were superheroes,” he says. “The whole community loved them. The high-school students all had Broncos binders … and even the third-string goalie was a star.”
    Crockett returned to the Broncos for training camp in August 1987 but, by his own admission, he was thirty pounds overweight. For one reason or another, Crockett never would play in the WHL. He says he had opportunities to play with junior teams in Richmond and Merritt, British Columbia, among others, but always said no because he was trying to understand how he had gone from being “highly touted” to this.
    In the end, just when he thought his career was over, Crockett joined the Williams Lake Mustangs of the Peace Cariboo junior league. It was Pat McGill, an uncle of Swift Current defenceman Ryan McGill, who convinced Crockett to keep playing. Pat was coaching the Mustangs and said he needed a goaltender. Crockett reported and sat for two weeks until, he says, an injury took out another goaltender. Given an opportunity, Crockett played and played and played, even helping the Mustangs to a league championship in 1988–89.
    But when he was done with the Mustangs after his twenty-year-old season, Crockett was done with hockey. While with the Mustangs, he proved to himself that he “could be a good goalie, and that was enough for me.”
    He never played again, and says he has no regrets.
    When asked about the Broncos and Graham James, and what they were able to accomplish after the crash, including winning the 1989 Memorial Cup, Crockett replies, “Graham had help putting the team together. There were other scouts. It wasn’t all him.”
    Now in his early forties, Crockett lives in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, with his son, Luke, and works for Avcorp Industries, a company based in nearby Delta that designs and builds