Amid the hype of Crave & HBO’s hit hockey series ‘Heated Rivalry,’ Netflix is throwing its own puck into the rink with another ice hockey show, but its story has some convinced it’s about a real incident.
On January 21, Netflix revealed new details its upcoming untitled hockey drama starring Michelle Monaghan.
According to Netflix, Monaghan plays Harper Sullivan, a hockey coach tasked with resurrecting a South Dorothy, Minnesota high school team after a bus crash.
The show’s description explains that the South Dorothy team had been churning out state championships and NHL stars for decades with Coach “Sully” Sullivan leading the charge.
“When a bus crash claims the lives of several players and Sully himself, the town looks to Harper Sullivan — Coach Sully’s widow — to coach a new team of battered and broken young men,” Netflix states. “What unfolds is the hopeful and unforgettable story of an underdog team who comes together to galvanize their town, reclaim their way of life, and turn their shared grief into an unstoppable superpower.”
This may sound like a good premise for a hockey show, but fans have been pointing out some major similarities between this incident and a real bus crash in 2018 that claimed the lives of 16 hockey players from the Humboldt Broncos.
Hockey fans accuse Netflix of profiting off Humboldt Broncos tragedy
On April 6, 2018, a catastrophic collision near Armley, Saskatchewan resulted in 16 fatalities and left 13 others injured when a northbound coach bus was struck by a westbound semi-trailer that failed to stop at an intersection.
The bus was transporting members of the Humboldt Broncos, a junior ice hockey team competing in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, with the majority of those killed or injured identified as players and team staff.
On July 6, 2018, truck driver Jaskirat Singh Sidhu was formally charged with 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 13 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm. Sidhu pleaded guilty to the charges in early 2019 and was subsequently sentenced to eight years in prison.
What followed was a long period of mourning and recovery, with the team eventually resuming operations and competing the following season.
The fact that Netflix’s new hockey uses a bus crash as the catalyst for the story has rubbed some fans the wrong way. The streaming platform never mentions the Humboldt crash in its announcement discussing the plot and the beginning of production.
“How gross to try and profit off of Humboldt,” the top voted Reddit comment on the announcement reads.
“Yeah, they will have to show how much is going to Humboldt players and families before I ever turn this on. Ridiculous, yet unsurprising,” another remarked.
The replies on X were similar in tone. One chimed in, “So, it seems it’s loosely based on the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018. For those of us who lived those days afterwards, the feelings never fade.”
Someone else commented, “Insane Netflix’s response to Heated Rivalry is to build upon the Humboldt crash.”
While the comparisons to the Humboldt are clear, they’re not the only hockey team to be victims of a bus crash, and there have been even deadlier travel tragedies in hockey history.
In 2011, a plane carrying the KHL’s Lokomotiv Yaroslavl crashed during take-off, killing all but one of its players.
So far, there’s no word on when this new Netflix series will release or if they’ll pay homage to Humboldt in some capacity in the lead-up to its premiere.
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