Coronach -
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night. . . nor snow banks, nor icy roads, nor fog will keep a hockey game at bay!! But no power will!
The Coronach Broncos were at the Coronach Sportsplex awaiting the arrival of the Estevan Bruins to play a scheduled league game when the power went out in Coronach.
Needless to say, after driving for three hours in blizzard like conditions, the Estevan team was very disappointed to arrive to a dark rink.
After finding out that the power outage was all across southwest Saskatchewan and there was no other rink to move to, the teams waited at the rink for a number of hours hoping that power would be restored. After receiving news from local SaskPower workers that the power would not return before morning, the Coronach team officials called the game off.
Estevan refused to accept the decision and continued to try to contact the busy SaskPower information line for confirmation.
The Coronach team and the officials dispersed from the rink.
After Estevan conceded that the power was not going to return, Coronach and Estevan coaches and managers pored over the rink schedule to find a spot to reschedule. Just as two dates were agreed upon a call came in to the rink from Dean Dosch from Willow Bunch.
When Dosch, the linesman for the evening, got back to his hometown, he was greeted with lights. He quickly called back to Coronach to offer the Willow Bunch rink to play the game.
Dosch then quickly set to work to clean out the dressing rooms, one was filled with the proceeds of a successful bottle drive.
The Coronach team gathered back at the rink and set out to Willow Bunch in a small train of vehicles, two men short.
The short drive to Willow Bunch was made much more difficult with snow, blowing snow and drifts beginning to form on the highway.
After most of the team had arrived safely at the rink and were filing into the dressing rooms, the Willow Bunch rink went dark.
Gale Blishchek, Estevan Bruin's team manager, said, "This game is just not meant to be!"
The teams agreed that the game would have to be replayed and the teams left for their respective towns.
While a cancelled hockey game is least of anyone's worries in a power outage, it is inconvenient in the least.
The game was rescheduled for Thursday, January 28. SaskPower announced on Wednesday, January 27 that they would have a planned power outage for January 28 from 9:00 am till 5:00 p.m.
With power restored after over 50 hours, the power was still unstable and major work still needed. The communities in the Coronach area had a two hour outage on Tuesday, January 26 and were prepared for intermitten outages over the week.
At press time, team officials were planning to go ahead with the game, with hopes that the ice would still be in good shape and that SaskPower would have everything in working order by 5:00.
