Shayne Putzlocher of Trilight Entertainment is off to Berlin and the Berlin Film Festival today as he begins to spread the word about plans to turn the book Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos into a movie. . . . Oh yes, he’s also looking for financing. . . . Before leaving, he appeared on Saskatoon radio station CKOM and, among other things, touched on the chances that the movie might be filmed in Swift Current. That interview is right here.



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F Tyler Benson of the Edmonton-South Side Athletic Club Southgate Lions is in the process of rewriting the Alberta Major Bantam Hockey League record book. There also is speculation that he may apply for ‘exceptional status’ in order to allow him to play in the WHL next season on a full-time basis, even though he will be only 15 years of age. Kristen Odland of the Calgary Herald examines that issue right here.
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If you have always wanted to own a piece of a hockey team, here’s your opportunity.
For $2,000, you now may purchase a share in the WHL’s Swift Current Broncos, who are calling this membership campaign ‘Saddle Up For Success’.
According to a news release from the Broncos: “All members hold a vote at the Annual General Meeting, provide influence on the organization through the Board of Directors and receive a charitable tax receipt issued by the City of Swift Current.”
Liam Choo-Foo, the chairman of the Broncos’ board of directors, adds: “I certainly acknowledge those people that stepped forward over 25 years ago as the original members, but as time has gone on we have lost a majority of that membership and it’s now down to less than 100 people. We would like to see it renewed and bring in new energy and enthusiasm as we go through this whole renewal of the Bronco organization.”
If you’re interested in this program, visit www.scbroncos.com.
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While the Broncos were announcing this initiative in an attempt to raise money and help guarantee their future in Swift Current and in the WHL, the league’s pooh-bahs were meeting in Las Vegas.
Yes, that Las Vegas.
You are free to wonder why the pooh-bahs wouldn’t gather in, say, Swift Current, if for no other reason than to spread some goodwill in a community that certainly does a lot to support its franchise.
You have to think the WHL folks left a fair chunk of change in Nevada, but not one penny of it will have done the league any good in terms of marketing or public relations in any of the communities in which it plays.
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The WHL has suspended D Tyler Yaworski of the Brandon Wheat Kings for six games. That’s the result of a headshot major and game misconduct for a hit on Pats D Luke Fenske in Regina on Saturday. Yaworski is a repeat offender, having served a three-game suspension for the same infraction during a game in Vancouver on Oct. 24. . . . Fenske, who is concussed, didn’t play in Regina’s 5-2 loss to the visiting Lethbridge Hurricanes last night.
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The way Ryan Lambert of Yahoo! Sports sees it, the NHL is doing less to prevent and deal with concussions than is the NFL. And we all know how much concussion-related heat the NFL is receiving these days.
Lambert explains the way he sees things right here.
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Bill Simmons of ESPN and Grantland is a prolific writer who also happens to be a fan of all teams Boston. That, however, is something that hampers his thinking only on occasion. The vast majority of the time he writes with clarity and this piece right here is no exception. The title on it is Daring to Ask the PED Question.
Pour yourself a cup of coffee and dig in.
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TUESDAY’S GAMES:
In Regina, F Jamal Watson scored twice to help the Lethbridge Hurricanes to a 5-2 victory over the Pats. . . . Hurricanes G Ty Rimmer stopped 48 shots. . . . Lethbridge jumped out front 2-0 by 6:03 of the first period and never looked back. . . . Regina G Matt Hewitt left at that point, having been beaten twice on four shots. . . . Watson has 14 goals this season. . . . F Sam Mckechnie got his 24th goal for Lethbridge. . . . The Pats scratched D Luke Fenske (concussed) and Greg Harder of the Regina Leader-Post reports that they lost D Tye Hand with concussion-like symptoms during the game. . . .

In Prince Albert, the Edmonton Oil Kings erased a 3-1 third-period deficit and beat the Raiders 4-3 in OT. . . . The winner came from D David Musil at 3:31 of extra time. It was his seventh goal of the season. . . . The Oil Kings have won nine in a row and now hold a 13-point lead over the Calgary Hitmen atop the Eastern Conference. . . . D Davis Vandane gave the Raiders a 3-1 lead at 7:56 of the third on the PP. . . . F Michael St. Croix got his 27th goal at 12:10, on the PP, to get Edmonton to within one, and F Stephane Legault, with his 11th, tied it at 13:29. . . . Raiders G Luke Siemens stopped 48 shots. . . . The Raiders had won three in a row from Edmonton. . . .

In Saskatoon, the Blades twice erased deficits en route to a 5-4 victory over the Moose Jaw Warriors. . . . The Blades have won five in a row. . . . F Tanner Eberle’s shorthanded goal gave the Warriors a 2-0 lead at 16:17 of the first period. . . . F Brett Stovin scored goals 33 seconds apart, pulling Saskatoon into a tie at 3:50 of the second. Stovin, who now has seven goals, had scored just once in his previous 23 games. . . . F Brayden Point, who had two goals, gave Moose Jaw a 3-2 lead at 11:11, only to have the Blades come back with three straight goals, the last two from F Brenden Walker, who now has 18 goals. . . . Saskatoon D Duncan Siemens had one assist and was plus-4, while D Darren Dietz was pointless and plus-4. . . . Moose Jaw G Justin Paulic stopped 50 shots. . . . The Blades now trail the East Division-leading Prince Albert Raiders by six points. The teams meet tonight in Saskatoon. . . .

In Victoria, F Alex Gogolev scored his 20th goal but later left the game with a skate cut as the Royals beat the Seattle Thunderbirds, 4-1. . . . Gogolev left early in the third period with an apparent skate cut that required immediate medical attention. . . . Cleve Dheensaw in the Victoria Times Colonist reported: “In what may be bad news for the Royals, leading-scorer Gogolev was helped off the ice in the third period with his left skate off and leaving a trail of blood from his foot. The club did not have information about the extent of the cut immediately following the game.” . . . D Joe Hicketts scored his second goal and added an assist for the Royals. . . . Victoria moved into a fifth-place tie with the idle Spokane Chiefs in the Western Conference.
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CHECKING-FROM-BEHIND COUNT:
None

CHECKING-TO-THE-HEAD COUNT:
D Darren Dietz, Saskatoon
D Ryan Gagnon, Victoria
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From the Edmonton Oil Kings (@EdmOilKings): “ 'I had Manson and Baumgartner both on me at the same time' — Coach Laxdal reminiscing about his playing days at the Art Hauser #OldTimeWHL”
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From Regan Bartel (@Reganrant), the radio voice of the Kelowna Rockets: “USHL reduces schedule by 4 games going from 64 to 60. When does WHL reduce schedule to eliminate exorbitant amount of 3 games in 3 nights?”

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I have been a sports writer for more than 40 years.
When I write, I’m often making reference to places like Moose Jaw, Spokane, Prince Albert and Lethbridge.
One day last week, I had a conversation with a man who threw out names like Berlin and Cannes. He talked of film festivals. He mentioned TIFF and it wasn’t a picture.
You write a book, someone who makes movies for a living expresses an interest, and you learn there’s a whole other world out there.
As most of you will be aware, the book project with which I was involved – Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986
Swift Current Broncos – has been optioned by Trilight Entertainment Inc. The Regina-based production company has plans to turn the book into a feature-length film.
All of this is completely new to me. I will say this book stuff has been an interesting ride and the movie stuff is just an extension of that. At least some of you may be interested in the process and I’m prepared to take you along for the ride.
We’ll start with a conversation I had with Shayne Putzlocher of Trilight Entertainment.
Asked how he came to be in the movie business, Putzlocher, a Regina native, says he has “always just loved it.”
He graduated from high school and was looking for his place in life when he saw an advertisement suggesting some courses that could lead to a career in movies. He took the courses and then “started from the bottom, picking garbage and sitting at the side of the road.”
He really did work his way up the ladder.
Trilight Entertainment, the production company, has been around since 2009. Putzlocher was involved in originating it after working on various productions, including the hit TV show Corner Gas.
Which brings us to Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos.
“The first step,” Putzlocher says, “was securing an option.”
That was done through an agreement with Dundurn, the publishers of the book.
With the option looked after, the process of script development begins.
Putzlocher recalls that this isn’t the first time someone has worked towards bringing this story to the big screen.
Minds Eye Entertainment, another Regina-based production company, worked on a similar project about 20 years ago.
“There was a script . . . they were almost in production,” Putzlocher recalls. “They were financed and everything. Then the scandal hit and – BOOM! – that show went away.”
The scandal, of course, involved Graham James, the general manager and head coach of the Broncos who was charged with sexually abusing players.
Putzlocher said he has had this project in the back of his mind since he first heard that our book was in production. He says he “thought long and hard about” the earlier effort. But he wanted to wait until the book was out and he had read it before forming an opinion.
Leesa Culp, the main push behind the book project, made sure Putzlocher got a copy. He was in production on a children’s movie, Step Dogs, at the time, but found time to read Sudden Death over the Christmas holiday.
“There is obviously a story here,” Putzlocher says, “but how it gets told was how I had to look at it.”
That’s what was going through his mind as he read the book.
His vision is to “concentrate on the triumphs over adversity, and the team and the camaraderie, and people in the town, and what it did in those moments of the funeral and making the playoffs that year and everything like that.”
In other words, this won’t be a movie about Graham James.
The shaping of that story already has begun. Putzlocher talked to his business partner, Holly Baird, and the decision was made to find “a real good feature film writer.”
They found that person in Rob King, who had been involved in the Minds Eye project “so was very excited to do this.”
Already King is working to prepare what Putzlocher says will be “a 10- to 20-page treatment to say what the story actually is going to be about.”
“We knew this is a story we really want to tell so it’s worth investing in,” Putzlocher continues. “We’ll wait for him to do that. It’ll probably take him a good month or so to come back with a 10- to 20-page treatment . . . then after that, if we like the way he’s going, we might tweak a few things, then it’s ‘OK you can start writing a script.’ ”
If things fall into place, a script could be completed by year’s end, at which time they will begin to research the project, do a whole lot of fact checking, look after waivers . . . and on and on.
“It’s a lot of money in legal and it’s a lot of work,” Putzlocher says. “We’ll take our time with this whole thing and we’ll make sure it’s done right.”
While all of this is going on, Putzlocher and Baird will be starting the hunt for financing. It is going to cost big money to bring this story to the big screen, simply because it is a ‘period’ piece. No, not ‘period’ in the sense of, say, Downton Abbey. But the incident around which Sudden Death is based occurred on Dec. 30, 1986, meaning cars and clothes, just for starters, were rather different than what we see on the streets and on people today.
“Uniforms, clearances, buses, extras . . . this is an expensive movie and you have to try to do it right,” Putzlocher says, adding that he’s talking about as much as $7 million. “Trying to raise that money in Canada isn’t impossible, but we will need public money from Canada on board and foreign sales.”
There are various grants and some development money available, and the process of applying for those has begun.
Putzlocher will be in Berlin later this week for the Berlin Film Festival that runs from Thursday through Feb. 17.
In brief, here’s what will be happening . . .
In Berlin, the pitch will begin to sales people to “see if we can generate some interest just on concept.”
The Cannes Film Festival runs May 15-26 and Putzlocher will be there, too. By then, he says, there’ll be a foreign sales agent on board and that person will “start trying to sell concept.”
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is scheduled for Sept. 5-15. By TIFF, he says, “we’d like to have some really good treatment and start going to Canadian distributors.”
In 2014, Trilight Entertanment will make the rounds again, this time with a script.
“And,” Putzlocher says, “we’ll start looking at cast, who’s going to be our director . . . we want a really high-profile director.”
This whole project, really, is about the art of selling. And were this simply a Canadian hockey movie, it wouldn’t have much of a chance. Putzlocher sees this as a whole lot more than that.
“Internationally,” he says, “hockey movies don’t sell that well. Just because we’re from Canada doesn’t mean everybody loves hockey. But this is more than just a hockey movie. . . . and we have to think of the international market.”
They also have to think about a theatrical distributor, and there are hopes that CBC will “take the TV rights after it goes theatrical.”
So what does all this mean?
If all goes well, if everything falls into place, Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos could be coming to a theatre near you in November or December of 2015.
Now that would make for a Merry Christmas!

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Trilight Entertainment Inc. has optioned Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos and has already begun the process of making a feature film based on the book that was released in November.
For more information, click right here and read the press release that Trilight Entertainment and Dundburn issued this morning.

There has never been a subscription fee for this blog, but if you enjoy stopping by here, why not consider donating to the cause? Just click HERE. . . and thank you very much.