Alberta hockey players wear, share stickers memorializing car crash casualties

A group of young hockey players north of Calgary will be donning and distributing stickers made in memory of three junior hockey players who died in an Alberta highway crash earlier this week.

A parent of the under-13, AA Airdrie Lighting hockey team requested nearly 100 stickers from a local vendor with the jersey numbers of the three players and their Southern Alberta Mustangs team logo.

It is a way to memorialize the trio after the collision Monday near Stavely, Alta., a town of about 550 people.

“It’s within our reach to try and show that we’re supporting them and to let them know that even though we’ve never met, even though we’ve never been to a game, that they’re still in our hearts,” said Matt Caron, the Airdrie Lightning’s manager and assistant coach. The parent wished to stay anonymous.

Airdrie is about 130 kilometres north of Stavely.

Eighteen-year-olds JJ Wright and Cameron Casorso, both from Kamloops, B.C., and 17-year-old Caden Fine from Alabama were heading to a Mustangs practice and were crossing a highway near Stavely when their car collided with a semi truck hauling gravel.

RCMP continue to investigate the cause of the collision and any involved criminality, though the initial investigation indicated the crash wasn’t criminal. The Alberta transportation ministry said it will review the intersection, which is standard procedure in cases of fatalities.

The Lightning plan to wear the stickers on their own helmets and pass more to their opponents in their first few games of a tournament in Regina this week.

Caron said the team’s staff are going to meet with their opponents ahead of the games to explain the meaning behind the stickers “in hopes that we can bring community together just for the families of the three.”

Ahead of their first round-robin tournament game Thursday, the Lightning held a moment of silence at centre ice with their Prince Albert-based opponents.

The families of the deceased players and the team have received widespread emotional and financial support after the crash, including a video message from the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers and two GoFundMe pages that have generated a combined $70,000.

The Mustangs, which play in the U.S. Premier Hockey League’s Premier division, are planning a memorial benefit game with players facing the Stavely Spurs Alumni team Sunday evening.

Shayra Ford, a Calgary hockey mother, also bought another hundred copies of the stickers for three of her four sons’ hockey teams. She’s the manager for two teams and a “helpful mom” for a third.

“We wanted to make it so that we think about them all the time, because ultimately we are all a part of the same hockey family,” she said.

Ford added it’s important to remember through all the hockey practices, games and politics of the sport, that the players are still people.

When asked why she felt it was important to remember the three players, whom she’d never met, she answered solemnly.

“They were hockey kids, just like mine.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 5, 2026.