CROWE’S NEST: Fog Bowl throws wrench in 2016 opener

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/06/2022 (1377 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Branden Crowe spent six seasons broadcasting games for the Brandon Wheat Kings, and it provided some unforgettable moments.

Crowe, who left the team in April after accepting a job with Hockey Canada, travelled with the Western Hockey League team on the bus and never missed a game during his tenure.

He and The Brandon Sun’s WHL beat writer, Perry Bergson, sat down to revisit the top five storylines that developed in his time, which spanned from the start of the 2016-17 campaign to the end of the 2021-22 regular season.

The conversation, which was edited for clarity and brevity, will continue in future editions of the paper, with one topic per day.

THE FOG BOWL

On a night the Wheat Kings celebrated their 50th season in the WHL and unveiled their 2015-16 championship banners, Mother Nature and an aging building upstaged both.

A game with the Moose Jaw Warriors at Westman Place — now Westoba Place — on Sept. 24, 2016, was called off 14:23 into the second period due to fog on the ice that had grown steadily worse.

With WHL commissioner Ron Robison in attendance for the banner unveiling, and after a couple of long delays during which the doors in the north of the ice surface were opened to let in fresh air and players skated around to move the fog, play ended after Nikita Popugaev scored his second goal to put the Warriors up 2-1.

On game day at 3 p.m., it was 16 C, with a humidity of 94 per cent after an active thunderstorm passed through earlier. An hour later, the temperature had risen to 18 C, which felt like 24 C due to the humidity of 100 per cent.

The temperature kept rising to 19 C at 10 p.m., with the humidity fluctuating between 94 and 100 per cent.

The facility had two banks of dehumidifiers, exhaust fans and heaters in place but doesn’t have air conditioning.

The conclusion of the game was eventually scheduled for Feb. 8, with a second game to be played after a brief break. By that time, both teams had six players in the lineup who didn’t play in the first game. Of the 26 players that Moose Jaw listed on its roster on Sept. 24, eight were gone, while Brandon has parted ways with seven of the 27 it had listed.

That included Warriors sniper Popugaev, who had both goals on Sept. 24, and the guy he scored them on, Wheat Kings goalie Jordan Papirny, after both were traded. That night, Moose Jaw won the Fog Bowl 4-3 in overtime and Brandon won the second game 4-3 in overtime.

• BERGSON: “That was your first regular-season game, was it not?”

• CROWE: “We had five pre-season games that year but I only did the last two on radio to prepare. It was the first real important Wheat King game of my career. I remember it was really nice, a beautiful day, and I came to the rink in shorts and changed into my suit thinking ‘What a great day for hockey.’ It turned into a weather nightmare.”

• BERGSON: “I don’t know what it was like for you in your booth — we sit on the same level — but I knew there was some fog, I just had no sense of how bad it was.”

• CROWE: “(Colour analyst) Pete (Gerlinger) and I both said it felt like the air was thick and you could see, whether it was the smoke from the fireworks or something was lingering but neither one of us knew how bad it was until (Wheat Kings education advisor) Glenda Zelmer sent Pete a text from ice level of a picture. It was on the bench and you couldn’t see the coaches from ice level. Pete showed it to me and I said on the radio, ‘I think it’s much worse than what we’re seeing up here.”

• BERGSON: “They actually got the players to skate around a little bit hoping they could make it go away. And of all nights, Ron Robison is there.”

• CROWE: “We had some fun with it at first. I grew up with Matt Lowry, who played for the Wheat Kings but also for Medicine Hat in the Memorial Cup and they had a similar situation in the Medicine Hat Arena in their series against Vancouver in the WHL final (in 2007). I remember talking to him about how weird it was, the refs saying come out and skate a few laps. When they started doing that, we started storytelling, not ever thinking the game would end … Once I saw Ron Robison at ice level, I thought we might have an interesting night here.”

• BERGSON: “He was standing where the Wheat Kings come out with (former Wheat Kings staffer) Rick Dillabough and you could see the two were quite animated in their discussions sometimes. The first period ended and they came back in the second period and the problem hadn’t gotten any better. Eventually, they called it. And of all nights, the night you raise a banner in your arena.”

• CROWE: “I think that played a factor because had all the fireworks and pyro in the pre-game. Combine that with the humidity that was about 100 per cent from it being a warm September muggy day, and it being an old building. All the bad lined up. I thought originally they would pause the game, send the fans home and they would restart at 9 or 10 o’clock to get the game in, once it had cooled down outside. I think it was you that co-ordinated that Ron would jump on the broadcast from ice level and he said ‘No, we’re going to have to make a decision here right away.’”

• BERGSON: “The two stories that were outstanding to me were talking to (head coaches) David Anning and Tim Hunter, and they said they couldn’t see each other across the ice. And my favourite was talking to Jordan Papirny. He said after the puck went over centre, he had to look up and watch it on the big screen because he couldn’t see anymore. That really struck me. That brought home how bad it was.”

• CROWE: “I remember one of the goal judges after there was a shot on goal and a scramble. The goal judge put his arms up, and he’s only sitting four feet behind the net and even he couldn’t see what was going on. Kelly McCrimmon … was texting Pete and I. Kelly’s brother Brad played in a game between Philadelphia and Buffalo in the NHL where the same thing happened, so while we were reminiscing, he was texting us feeding us info to talk about … My first thought when they called it was ‘I wonder what he’s thinking.’ It’s his first season not directly involved as GM or coach … and it’s falling apart. If you ask Ron Robison, they were probably conversing throughout that night.”

• BERGSON: “I would be surprised if they weren’t. Talk about symbolic.”

• CROWE: “It’s the changing of the guard and it falls apart.”

• BERGSON: “They resumed in February and the Wheat Kings came back and scored late and then lost in overtime.”

• CROWE: “The weird thing is that they wanted to restart with the same rosters but it was a month after the trade deadline. Nikita Popugaev had scored twice on opening night and was then traded to Prince George so on the game sheet he still had two goals. I remember the decision upstairs was to make him the third star even though he didn’t play with the Warriors anymore, and that didn’t sit well with Tim Hunter, for whatever reason. He was not happy. Technically he had two goals in a game he didn’t finish.”

• BERGSON: “I was sitting beside Warriors GM Alan Millar, and he knew that sometimes I pick the stars, and when Nikita Popugaev’s name was announced, he went off on me. It was like ‘Hey, I had nothing to do with this. You’re going to have to talk to somebody else.’ He was hot. I believe the Wheat Kings ended up getting fined over that.”

• CROWE: “It started an argument in the hallway between (Wheat Kings staffer) Chris Falko and some game staff and Tim Hunter. I don’t think it was ever intended to be a slight on Popugaev or the Warriors. It was ‘Well, he had two goals in the game, what do you do?’ They used the same game sheet as before. What do you do?”

• BERGSON: “It’s probably the most memorable game I’ve ever been at.”

• CROWE: “The fans after that game, and even to this day, six years later, still talk about it and they ask me about it, probably because it was my first game as well. For me, my entire life as an adult, I wanted to be the radio guy for the Brandon Wheat Kings and to get that opportunity … I left my place in Brandon and I had never been so excited for a hockey game in my life. Now, 15 minutes into that game, I’m thinking ‘What do we do for commercials, what do we do for everything else that we promised to the sponsors? We don’t have any music scheduled until at least 10 o’clock tonight and it’s 7:45. How do we solve this?’ I was brand new to the position and didn’t know what to do, but luckily I had a really good producer, Dan Hawryluk, back at the station who said ‘Don’t worry, you call it when you call it and we’ll make it work.’ Quickly I went from ‘This is my Stanley Cup Game 7 moment’ to ‘Oh, oh, how do I get out of here? I don’t want to screw this up’ but people still talk about it to this day. It will go down as one of the goofiest, strangest home games ever played at the Keystone.”

• BERGSON: “What I learned that day, which is strange because I’ve been to enough games at the Keystone, is they have no air conditioning in the building and no way of dealing with that kind of moisture in the air.”

• CROWE: “I found out after that for the Memorial Cup (in 2010) that they had to bring in special (air conditioning) units and install them for the week to prevent that from happening. Again, the weather was perfect, it had rained and it was hot and muggy, 5,000 people, old building. Everything was ripe for a strange night. I remember signing off and looking at Pete and it was ‘What was that?’”

• BERGSON: “The Branden Crowe era has begun.”

• CROWE: “The next night we went to Moose Jaw and the Internet dropped out in the whole building and I had to call the game on my cellphone, so now I’m two games in thinking ‘Did (former broadcaster) Bruce Luebke put the biggest hex on me in the history of hockey?’ After the second game, Bruce texted me and said ‘Hey, hang in there, you’ll be all right. Get them all out of the way at the start and you’ll be fine.’”

» In tomorrow’s Brandon Sun: Part two of five examines Nolan Patrick’s draft year.

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson