"Our deepest thoughts and prayers to you in your grieving, and we grieve with you."

"The whole hockey community mourns today. Such a horrific situation that hit so very close to home for all of us who spent our lives at that age riding buses to hockey games, and it being part of the fabric of playing in Canada.

"On behalf of Mark Chipman and David Thomson and our entire Winnipeg Jets family, fans included, we would like to offer our sympathies and condolences and prayers to the Humboldt Broncos and their whole family, players, coaches, the families involved and their fans as well," Paul Maurice said to begin his media availability Saturday morning.

Friday's bus accident involving the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League's Humboldt Broncos - an accident that so far has claimed the lives of 14 people - is the only thing on the minds of the Jets players, coaches, staff, and management.

While the Jets will take to the ice for game 82 tonight, they - like the entire hockey community - will do so with a heavy heart.

WINNIPEG - Eighty one times this season, this space was used to provide insight to line-up information, or news from the Winnipeg Jets morning skate.

Video: PREGAME | Paul Maurice

There were no questions about line-up, playoff preparation, or line matches this morning - nor should there have been.

Instead, players reflected on the perspective yesterday's events puts on a single hockey game.

"We've gone through those years, long hours on bus trips, you're going to play the game you love. You never expect something like this to happen," said Adam Lowry.

"Then you see it does happen. These kids, their dreams to go on to play college hockey, Western League hockey, and playing the game they love, it's taken away from them. It's so sad."

Video: PREGAME | Adam Lowry

Countless hours are spent on a bus at all levels of hockey.

It's a time for bonding. It's where stories are shared and teams are forged.

Lowry spent every bit of his four WHL seasons with the Swift Current Broncos, wearing the captain's 'C' in his final season in 2012-13.

Swift Current is a community that knows this pain. In December of 1986, the Broncos were involved in a crash on their way to Regina, with four players losing their lives.

"Every Swift Current minor hockey team, and we do as well, we wear the clover with the four numbers on it," said Lowry, who tried to put into words how tight-knit junior hockey communities are.

"You look at all the small towns across Saskatchewan, everybody knows everybody. Everyone comes to the games. You look at the support the community has to make sure those teams survive.

"You're impacted by some of those victims. Whether you billeted them, you served them at the restaurants, you coached them. Everything is so interconnected there. It's crazy. It's a huge loss for that community."

Video: PREGAME | Josh Morrissey

All but 33 of Josh Morrissey's 271 WHL games came with the Prince Albert Raiders. Being just 142 kilometres from Humboldt, Morrissey and his team would often share the same highways travelled by the Broncos through the province of Saskatchewan.

Like most in the hockey community, Morrissey found out about the tragedy late last night.

"This morning, for me being that it's not far from where I played, and where I spent hundreds of hours on the bus myself, going to games, coming from games in the middle of the night, it puts things into perspective," said Morrissey.

"The bus has some of the best memories of playing in junior hockey. It's one of those things, playing in PA and being in Saskatchewan, we had a lot of bus rides, a lot of bus rides through storms and through the night.

"It's devastating."

Video: PREGAME | Mark Scheifele

Maurice, who has teenagers of his own at home, summed up where tonight's game ranks in the grand scheme of things.

"The game will not take centre stage. It won't. It will be played, and that's it," said Maurice.

"All of them, I can only say they're doing what they loved. They loved to do it.

"The excitement of going to a playoff game, being on the bus with all the people that at that point of your life you're the most excited to be with every day.

"All the best stories are told on the buses, in the locker rooms, in the private areas where it's just them.

"It's where the friendships are born, the anticipation builds. The quietness of a bus after a tough loss, all the things you go through when you're playing a sport. It's so much a part of sporting life, of hockey life, especially at that age.

"To have it end like that, to have it be part of all the survivors' lives now, is just an incredibly difficult thing."

Video: PREGAME | Tyler Myers

The most important thing now, is the hockey community coming together, to help in any way it can.

"The rinks will be full. In every NHL city, every NHL player, junior, college, they've all gone through it. They're all a part of it. So they're there then, with them," said Maurice.

"People around you, I can only assume, helps you get through something that must feel impossible to get through today. In all the rinks around Canada, and the States, they'll be remembered tonight, and certainly every day going forward."

Video: PREGAME | Bryan Little