The arena goes quiet just before the puck is to drop. Gasps pour out, followed by light chattering. A leader is down, a friend. Time stands still. A chill comes over an already chilly hockey game. Parents hug their children. Strangers hug each other. Tears well in the corners of eyes. In the moments to come, a parade of heroes fights to save a life, and four men fight to save a season.
The 26-year-old team captain of the Tucson Roadrunners, Craig Cunningham, has dropped to the ice, convulsing. He has lost consciousness. His heart stops.
Hereโs what happens next:
The team president
Bob Hoffman was high above the rink, watching the national anthem from his perch up on the runway. He was excited for the Nov. 19 Roadrunners game, the seventh scheduled home contest in team history.
The team has been a boon to the city so far, a real taste of professional sports played inside a remodeled arena. For a city without a major league sports franchise, the Roadrunners have been a shot in the arm.
Hoffman is in the middle of it all after being promoted to team president in mid-September, replacing the short-lived Brian Sandy.
Hoffman loves taking it all in. Heโs been involved in the sport for nearly two decades, most recently as the executive vice president for the ECHLโs Quad City Mallards.
Heโs never seen anything like this.
Cunningham fell to the ice, and within five seconds, Hoffman was sprinting for the stairs.
โAt points you think back, and it feels like it took forever, and sometimes it felt like a millisecond,โ he said.
Hoffman initially thought the forward had slipped and hit his head, but then two officials skated over and beckoned for medical help.
Trainers from both the Roadrunners and their opponent, the Manitoba Moose, bolted toward the ice. A group of local firemen who happened to be on the ice performing the national anthem as a Scottish bagpipe and drum band jetted over to help. Within seconds, Cunninghamโs jersey was cut off and medics performed chest compressions. He was placed on a stretcher and hurried out.
Hoffman quickly made it down to the home-team corner, his mind racing as quickly as his feet.
โIโve been in the sport a long time, and Iโve seen on-ice injuries, but Iโve never seen anything like that,โ he said.
In the moments after, Hoffman had dual purposes.
โI felt for Craig, but the attention he was receiving โ they got to him quickly โ that made me switch up,โ he said. โHow are the players? How are the officials going to deal with this? We have a very young staff, and for most, itโs their first time in hockey, and a lot of them got a good look at what was happening. Then it was about trying to make sure everything got checked off, whether it be for one minute, 10 minutes or an hour.โ
Hoffman quickly huddled with Tucson general manager Doug Soetaert behind the rink. The general manager of Manitoba, Craig Helsinger, happened to be at the game that night, too. The three discussed postponing the game.
โI think what we noticed was the state the players were in, just seeing their facial expressions,โ Hoffman said.
They called American Hockey League officials, and within 10 minutes, a decision was made.
โWe just realized there was no way we could put on a game,โ Hoffman said. โIt was the psyche of players, but also the staff.โ
Hoffman remembers being backstage, looking at Soetaert, mouth agape, his mind a jumble.
What do we do now?
The general manager
Soetaert is, like Hoffman, a hockey lifer.
The Roadrunnersโ general manager played professional puck for years; after a half-decade bouncing between the AHL and the NHLโs New York Rangers, he finally hooked on for good with the Winnipeg Jets in 1981. Soetaert played for the Montreal Canadiens and eventually hung up the skates back with the Rangers in 1987. He played with Mark Messier, went mano-a-mano with Patrick Roy, faced a Wayne Gretzky breakaway, for heavenโs sake. He knows hockey.
Soetaert was a goaltender, after all; heโs a protector.
That Saturday night, heโd turned away just before the opening face-off and looked back, sitting up above in the press box. He looked back and saw someone on the ice. He didnโt know who it was or what was happening.
Soetaert realized as soon as everyone else did that it was Cunningham, his dimpled team captain.
โI thought he tripped and was laying there being silly, and then he laid there and laid there, and when you see the refs send the trainers over, you know itโs serious,โ Soetaert said. โIt was a traumatic experience visualizing what was going on. You could hear first responders working on him right away.โ
He remembers huddling backstage with Hoffman. Soetaert recalls the moment that he found out that Cunninghamโs mother, Heather, was in the stands. She had arrived that day from Trail, British Columbia.
Soetaert immediately went to look after her.
โWe had to comfort her, first and foremost,โ he said. โI made sure she was looked after.โ
Public address announcer Dave Lieb informed the crowd that the game was postponed, and most of the players bolted to St. Maryโs Hospital, less than two miles from the arena.
Soetaert said that Heather accepted a ride to the hospital, still stunned at the scene that had unfolded, and by the time everyone got out, โIt was 10 to 15 minutes later,โ Soetaert said.
It was a touch-and-go situation. Numerous code blues.
Soetaert felt for Heather. He attended the meetings with numerous doctors, nurses and specialists, right by her side.
โIt was a real-life situation that she was going through, and we couldnโt let her do that by herself,โ he said. โShe was in very bad shape, seeing her son laying there, trying to understand why this happened. We were trying to comfort her. Everyone wants to know whatโs going on, and we were trying to keep the players as informed as possible.โ
Around 1 a.m., a specialist from Banner-University Medical Center arrived and performed a major operation, which Soetaert said is believed to be the first time a doctor has gone from UMC to St. Maryโs to perform a surgery to stabilize a patient.
After his condition was stabilized, players started to filter out in groups. It was approaching 3 a.m.
โIt wasnโt only players and staffs working together, it was the doctors at both St. Maryโs and UMC,โ he said. โIt was just an unbelievable scene of people working together, right from the beginning until the end of the night. Everybody was pulling and praying, there was great communication from the doctors. And a lot of soul-searching.โ
The Roadrunners brought their sports psychologist in on Sunday for counseling. On Monday, the team higher-ups met to determine their course of action. Cunninghamโs condition had only slightly improved, and team officials told the media that the captain was โcritically ill.โ
So was the psyche of the team.
โWe did not feel very good about the group mentally being ready to play on Tuesday,โ Soetaert said. โWe met with our leadership and decided we were too fragile to be playing.โ
But they also knew the blunt truth: Despite a tragedy, however stark, a season cannot be canceled.
The Roadrunners postponed two midweek games, but needed to set a return date. And that date would be the following Saturday, Nov. 26.
โI donโt know if you ever get past the anguish, but you have to have a reset button,โ he said. โWe have to be mentally and physically ready to play. We all love him, support him, and there was nothing we could do, so we had to get back to some form of normality. As in life, you have to keep moving.โ
With so many moving parts, though, normality is a fluid thing. Hoffman estimates that on any given game night, there are roughly 120-130 employees working the game.
Can you ever be normal again after watching something like this?
That night, there were more than 2,000 people in the seats.
That means 4,000 eyes watching heartbreak unfold in real time. At least 50 of those eyes were all on one man: head coach Mark Lamb.
โI acted how I act,โ he said. โI donโt know if itโs good, bad, whatever, but you have to be an influence, have to be a leader. I thought about that a lot. Have I ever been in a situation like that before? No, but Iโve been in some situations. I wouldnโt say Iโm hardened by it, but Iโve seen some things.โ
The coach
Lamb grew up on a farm. He calls his clan โa rodeo family,โ and in the folksiest of rodeo parlance, he says, โand I seen a lotta wrecks.โ A roper and rider himself, heโs been in a few.
โIโve seen a lot of guys being carried off on stretchers, but you know itโs a broken bone, a shoulder,โ Lamb said. โThis is โฆ this is different. With that, you see a wreck, and you know something bad has happened. The other night, we didnโt see a wreck.
โWe just saw a guy laying on the ice, fighting for his life.โ
Like Hoffman and Soetaert and probably everyone else in the arena, the tragedies in his own life came flashing back.
Lamb remembers watching a player break his neck on the ice as a second-year pro. He recalled the 1986 Swift Current bus crash, when the Swift Current Broncosโ team bus hit a patch of black ice and flipped, killing four players.
โI told the guys, this is a game that can bring a lot of joy to your life,โ Lamb said, โbut it can also bring sadness, and this is probably the most sadness Iโve ever seen.โ
In that moment, Lamb, a 52-year-old father of three, had to look after two dozen of his other kids.
Standing in the Roadrunners locker room, Lamb wasnโt prepared to address 20-plus physically tough but emotionally broken hockey players. โYou gain some experience, but youโre never ready for something like that, at all,โ Lamb said. โYou canโt be ready for that.โ
Not only did the horrors heโs seen fill his thoughts, but thoughts of his own family did as well.
Like Soetaert, Lamb said, โYou look and go, oh, my God, what about his parents? You start reflecting on everything, your own family, your own experiences, and those arenโt positive things youโre looking back on. Then as a coach, Iโm going, โWow, I have to be the leader of the ship now?โโ
Lamb describes the locker room that followed the incident accurately, if sadly.
โEveryone was in a somber mood, as it should be,โ he said.
Lamb could see his players easing back toward normalcy two days later, when they met for an informal skate session.
โI think going out on the ice made everyone a little more comfortable,โ Lamb said. โItโs what weโre used to, and in a bad situation, we felt comfortable together, being at the rink.โ
Lamb was involved in the decision to cancel the two midweek games. These are his players, his kids. They werenโt ready.
โYou have to look at the big picture, and at the team,โ he said. โWe do have men on the team, but there are still a lot of young kids whoโve never dealt with this kind of situation. When youโre going on the ice, youโre playing to win, and how important was winning at that point? Not at all. For us to cancel the games, give ourselves time to reflect or heal a little bit.
โI didnโt want to coach to win when it didnโt matter.โ
The teammate
โFear,โ Eric Selleck says.
That sums it up.
One word to describe what itโs like, as a player, to see a friend, a brother, a captain, in such a bleak scenario.
You canโt imagine what itโs like to play the game again.
โI was nervous, I was scared, I was shocked,โ Selleck said. โThe whole team was shocked. Thereโs no way you can watch that happen to somebody, one of your buddies, a team captain, and then continue. It was really needed to take the week.โ
And on that night, Selleck was really needed.
Selleck is 29, a decade deep into his professional career. Heโs one of the longtooths on the team, a lifetime of hockey worn across his face.
The Roadrunners were not just looking to Lamb on that night, but to their leaders, and as a veteran and assistant captain, eyes were on Selleck, too.
โA lot of guys raced to the hospital, but for me personally, I just sat down, regrouped, and I was one of the last guys over there,โ Selleck said. โWe just tried to help one another get through it. Nobody knew exactly what to do, but everyone looks to the team leaders, the older guys, and Iโm one of those guys, and honestly I didnโt know what to do.โ
At the hospital, players rallied around each other. They laughed, when they could. There were tears. Some were forced into unforeseen roles.
Selleck said Brandon Burlon, a 26-year-old defenseman, stepped up to the plate.
โBurlon was in there talking with his mom, calling the brothers for his mom, and none of us had eaten and he went and got pizza and wings,โ Selleck said. โThat night he did a great job. Heโs an older guy, heโs been around. Different guys handle those situations differently, and I thought he did a great job with his mother, making calls. When nobody else wanted to leave, he went and did it. It was awesome.โ
Awesome is perhaps a strange word to use when describing a harrowing scenario, but when someone rises to confront sadness and fear head-on, it is indeed awe-inspiring.
There are other words to describe this situation. Scarier words.
Cunningham remains in the hospital. The NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, Tucson’s parent club, have offered few details about Cunningham’s status. Former teammate Milan Lucic told NHL.com late last month that Cunningham has “progressed a lot,” though he remains in and out of consciousness.
There remain many questions. How did this happen? And why?
The Roadrunners rallied around their captain on that night, and around each other, but the wound is still fresh. Who knows if theyโll get answers?
โWe see guys get banged up, break an ankle, and you know what, itโs a thing,โ Selleck said. โItโs just a thing. You know theyโre gonna live, gonna be OK, may be out a while, but we know there are steps that are going to get you back in the game.
โWith this โฆ it is the fear of the unknown.โ
