Teddy Bear Toss a way to spread the joy

The teddy-bear toss simply never gets old for the Brandon Wheat Kings and the franchise’s longest-serving employee.

Chris (Falko) Falkevitch is the team’s director of game day operations and community relations, and has been with the club for more than a decade.

On Nov. 7, they held the 28th edition of the much loved event, which was first held in 1996 and nearly three decades later is still making an impact in the community.

“Teddy-bear toss is one of the funnest nights of the year,” Falkevitch said. “If you can’t get excited for teddy-bear toss, then you should not be working in hockey. It is absolutely a blast.

“It’s one of those nights that when the doors are opening, the concourse is already buzzing. You have that feeling of a big game. There is something about working in sports and working in events that it takes something special, but when the game is done, you can’t sleep.

“You are still buzzing and can almost feel it in your veins, that energy from the crowd. You get it for playoffs, you get it when there are big crowds, and you get it for special nights like that.”

PROLOGUE

The team picks the date of the game during the league’s scheduling meeting in the summer.

They generally target the first two weeks of December, ideally on a Saturday on the second night of a doubleheader at Westoba Place.

This year, Hub Insurance helped sponsor the tickets as every student in the Brandon School Division from kindergarten to Grade 6 was handed a voucher to come to the game for free.

All 23 Wheat Kings players were involved as they visited each elementary school in Brandon.

“We probably went to every elementary school in the city and handed out tickets to all the kids,” Texas forward Matteo Michels said. “You could see the joy on their faces when they saw us and they were all super excited. It’s really cool to not only have the kids in elementary schools look up to us, but the kids we give the teddy bears to kind of know it’s from us. That’s who we did it for, so it’s a cool thing in the community all around.”

Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray enjoyed a long playing career that included four seasons with the Wheat Kings, but never participated in a teddy-bear toss game. The tradition began in Brandon in December 1996, and he graduated from the team in the spring of 1995.

“It’s one of the best nights of the year and it’s obviously for a great cause, first and foremost,” Murray said. “There is a lot of excitement. Our players certainly have it circled on the calendar, and I’m sure everyone wants to get that goal.

“From a coaching standpoint, the biggest thing you want to score one. In our league this year there have been some games where it was lopsided on the wrong side or even a team got shut out. That’s my biggest fear, is just getting the goal and getting it over with quick.”

Murray identified the nightmare for any hockey team that hosts a teddy bear toss: There is the very real chance their team might be shut out.

It happened in Wenatchee on Dec. 8 when the league-leading Everett Silvertips blanked the Wild 3-0. In an outcome that feels almost as bad, the Wild then went into Kelowna for their teddy-bear toss game and pumped the Rockets 9-1, handing the hosts an ugly loss at their Christmas celebration.

“It is absolutely one of the most stressful things to think about,” Falkevitch said. “You put so much time and effort into it, and when you have a big crowd like that, you want to give that crowd the best experience possible and you want them to leave buzzing about your team and ‘Oh, I want to go back and watch that again.’ It’s really hard to do when you get shut out on home ice, so that would be disastrous.”

Falkevitch added it would need to be a pretty spectacular goaltending performance because the Wheat Kings are always so keyed up.

That might be reflected in the fact the team has scored eight times in the first three minutes.

On Dec. 11, 2021, Brett Hyland set the new team record when he scored 20 seconds into the game to bring down the teddies. If a shutout creates one kind of hardship, scoring that fast creates another.

“That goal did happen too fast, to the point where we still had lineups of people waiting to buy tickets to get into that game,” Falkevitch said. “We’re always ‘Be in your seat, because you don’t when it’s going to happen.’”

As a result, when Nolan Ritchie scored five minutes later to make it 2-0, another pile of bears were thrown on the ice.

The players are certainly well aware of the stakes.

“It’s just the best game of the year, hands down,” defenceman Rhett Ravndahl said. “Everyone is excited for it, it has a playoff-type feeling, that’s how excited the guys are. It’s just a really good feeling around the room. Everyone wants to get the goal and everyone just feels amazing. You can feel it in warmups. It’s awesome.”

In a way, the event begins in the leadup to the game in the dressing room as the Wheat Kings discuss who’s going to score.

“Everybody always wants to get that goal,” team captain Quinn Mantei said. “It’s a big one so it’s talked about and we make our bets on who is going to get it.”

PREPARATION

While the action on the ice is entirely unpredictable, behind the scenes the games are tightly scripted for the event staff and Falkevitch, who is also the in-game announcer.

The plan is to have three to four minutes set aside for fans to throw their donations on the ice, which allows the volunteers time to mobilize for the cleanup. In recent years, the volunteer crew has been one of the under-13 A Wheat Kings teams, with the U13 Gold Wheat Kings on the ice this year.

“We want the ice to be filled up,” Falkevitch said. “We don’t want to start cleaning instantly. We want to see bears all over the place.”

The youngsters are in skates and ready to jump on the ice from the opening whistle, with four pickup trucks also waiting in the hitching ring, which is the large room behind where the Zamboni comes out in the northwest corner of Westoba Place.

The volunteer response is carefully mapped out, with everyone assigned to a certain chore and area of the ice.

“It can be a very confusing time out there with bears flying all over,” Falkevitch said. “With our rink and how it’s set up with the three-quarters bowl and the netting around the south end that goes just about to the faceoff dots, we focus on having four areas of collection, which are the faceoff dots on the centre-line side. We use those dots as points of collection, with our team broken up into crews of four.

“In that area of responsibility, their job is to clean up all the bears they can.”

Several years ago, Total Farm Supply gave the team more than a dozen giant grain bin bags, which are about eight feet wide by eight feet tall and can accommodate more than 100 bears each.

They are quickly filled, but whether the other team is sitting on their bench watching depends on when the goal is scored.

If the goal happens in the first 15 minutes, the opponent stays put. If the goal occurs in the final five minutes of a period, the other team heads to its dressing room, the bears are cleaned up, and after the Zamboni resurfaces the ice, the rest of the period is played. When the buzzer sounds, a brief break is taken, the goalies switch sides and the next period begins.

On those nights, the cleanup generally takes a little longer because there isn’t an instant time pressure to get the game going again.

The WHL doesn’t set out any time requirements, because there is a massive difference cleaning the ice in a smaller community like Swift Current and a National Hockey League arena like Calgary.

In total, about 25 to 30 people are involved in the cleanup. The players are asked to lend a hand with the cleanup, but are also encouraged to take pictures with the team’s social media staff and photographers, and simply enjoy the moment.

“We’re doing our best to enjoy the moment early in the game and celebrate it with our fans,” Falkevitch said. “We don’t want to rush anything, but at the same time it is a big job to make sure all that stuff is done.”

The goal is to have everything cleaned up within three or four minutes after they get started, while highlights from past teddy bear tosses are shown on the scoreboard.

Usually within 10 to 12 minutes, play is resuming. This year the goal came at 7:08 p.m., and after a quick cleanup, the game resumed at 7:17.

THE BIG GAME

On Dec. 7, the Prince Albert Raiders skated into town.

Marcus Nguyen got Brandon’s first shot 55 seconds into the game and the crowd buzzed. Unfortunately for young fans with an itchy trigger finger when it came to bear tossing, the Raiders took the puck back down the ice and scored on their first shot two minutes 23 seconds into the game.

It took just 30 seconds for Brandon to tie the game and draw a mighty roar from the crowd of 4,375.

Brandon forward Dominik Petr carried the puck into the Prince Albert zone, but was stripped by a pair of Prince Albert defenders. The puck sat by itself for a moment in the slot before Ravndahl pounced on it and fired it past Raiders goalie Dmitri Fortin to bring down a deluge of teddy bears.

It was the defenceman’s second goal of the season and just the fourth of his career, giving the Wheat Kings an unlikely hero.

“I’m just not the guy anyone would expect at all,” Ravndahl said. “To get that done, to get that goal and have it be as big as it is, it was just an unbelievable feeling. There’s nothing like it.”

The last defenceman to get the goal was Rene Hunter in 2013: The only other blue-liner was Ryan Pulock in 2011.

Needless to say, his teammates let him have it.

“Everyone has been saying ‘You’ve been waiting this long to get it going?” Ravndahl said. “Stuff like that. The guys have been giving it to me a little bit but it’s all fun and games.”

Brandon captain Quinn Mantei said Ravndahl was the perfect person to score the goal.

“I was super pumped that Rav got it just because he’s not one of the known goal scorers and it’s always fun when somebody unexpected gets it,” Mantei said. “That game is always a lot of fun and it brings the fans out and brings energy and we feed off of that. It’s an exciting game and a happy game where people are giving and generous. “It’s fun when the bears coming raining down on the ice. Everybody is smiling, everybody is happy, the kids in the crowd are having fun and the guys on the ice are as well.”

WHAT’S NEXT

After the bears are carted off the ice, the trucks and volunteers meet in the hitching ring. A big trailer from Westman Christmas Cheer becomes the new home for the bears as the volunteers bag any of the loose stuff that’s sitting in the back of the trucks.

To spare a blast of chilly air for fans from the side door behind the Zamboni bay, the Christmas Cheer van drives through the Keystone Centre and leaves near the Curling Club. Brandon Moving has volunteered to handle the move for the last four years, hauling the entire load to Christmas Cheer’s headquarters at the intersection of Rosser Avenue and Seventh Street.

They bring it to the landing bay, where it’s carried down to the Christmas Cheer workshop. On the following Monday morning, volunteers begin the process of unpacking and sorting.

Synthia Wright serves as social media manager with Brandon and Westman Christmas Cheer. She estimates more than 100 people helped assemble this year’s hampers.

“It’s good to spread the joy so that people don’t get worn out,” Wright said. “We have a group of about a dozen board members and key volunteers. They’re all seniors so we can be down here all day, and then there is a group in the office that deals with all the hamper applications and questions.”

It’s a big job.

In 2023, about 2,450 donations were received from the teddy-bear toss, including 475 knitted items like toques or mitts. Wright expects the 2024 numbers will be very similar.

Last year, they were able to use about 1,500 stuffies, which meant about 500 had to be stored for next year.

“If we can encourage toques and gloves, that’s what we need, especially for teen males,” Wright said. “We have trouble getting gifts for kids aged 13 to 17. People love giving books and toys and stuffies for little kids. What did you get when you 13 to 17? It wasn’t a stuffed Paw Patrol.

“We are very thankful, don’t get me wrong. We absolutely 100 per cent love those stuffies but we always have an excess and we never have enough toques and gloves.”

Falkevitch said the team understands the situation — and specifically did that messaging when the players visited the schools — but the name has stuck.

“That’s why we try our best to call it the teddy, toque and mitt toss as much as we can, but I get it,” Falkevitch said. “We just call it the teddy toss for simplicity’s sake.”

They also occasionally get donations such as puzzles or games, which also have to be sorted into the appropriate piles.

While the organization appreciates the contribution of small to medium stuffed toys, they have trouble working with the extra large ones.

“The reason we can’t use the overly large ones is because our volunteers sometimes have to go upstairs to carry the hamper boxes and if it’s a large family with three kids, we can’t ask them to carry three boxes of groceries and gifts and carry three giant stuffies as well,” Wright said. “We try to make sure the stuffies fit into the hamper boxes and those giant ones don’t fit anywhere. They’re massive.”

The overly large teddies have a few potential destinations. Some are donated to the public library for story time, some go to First Nation groups as raffle prizes, some are given to thrift stores and some go to local schools.

“They have those Christmas stores where you can bring a quarter and buy something for your mom and your sister or whatever, so we do donate to there too if we have an excess and can’t use them all,” Wright said.

The organization can only use new stuffies, so used ones have to be put in the city’s textile diversion program. That can be heart breaking at times.

One stuffie this year was a prime example, because it came with a heart-rending note.

“Please take care of Gerry,” the note read. “I’ve had him since I was seven years old and now I’m 12 and I would like him to be raised in another home. Merry Christmas.”

“How cute is that,” Wright said. “Of course we can’t because it’s used and we can only give new items but how sweet is that? He wrote the note and sent it with Gerry flying onto the ice.”

Christmas Cheer has a finite ability to make hampers, so they seek help from the community. Any people or groups who are adopting families for the holidays can also come down and get stuffies for the kids for their hampers.

“It’s not just our hampers they’re for, it’s all the hampers,” Wright said. “This year we got 1,536 hamper requests, and we can only fill 1,100 due to the space constraints down here. We’re hoping that for 400-plus, church groups, service groups, business groups adopt a family. If they do, they can come down to our workshop and get some of these stuffies that were tossed for their kids and their families.”

Last year, 600 stuffies went into 300-plus hampers donated by other groups. Christmas Cheer delivered 1,199 hampers last Wednesday and Thursday, with the office closing on Friday.

Wright made a special note of where a couple of the many stuffed toys headed, noting Perky Panda went to a seven-year-old girl in a family of four, while Bruno Bear was given to a two-year-old boy in a family of six.

With adopters doing 345 more hampers, a grand total of 1,554 families received a helping hand this year.

Those families were comprised of 5,119 people, with 2,709 adults and 2,410 children. In 2023, the group had more than 900 children under the age of 10.

Christmas Cheer also promotes the Westman and Area Traditional Christmas Dinner to people who missed out on a hamper because they can get a meal and gifts, and send people to Samaritan House for groceries.

IMPACT

It’s not just the Wheat Kings lending a hand at Christmas Cheer. Other sports teams and even a local dance studio made donations this year.

In another instance, all the proceeds from a piano recital came to Christmas Cheer because the teacher lost her possessions in a fire years ago, and was grateful for the help she received in the community at the time.

Wright said Christmas Cheer’s work is overwhelmingly appreciated, and sometimes it’s paid forward.

“Our treasurer Bob (Walberg) was sitting at Canadian Tire at our donation table this year and he said a lady came up and put 10 bucks in the bin and said ‘I needed Christmas Cheer for six years raising my kids and now I’m in a good spot and I can afford to give money back,’” Wright said. “It’s those kind of stories we absolutely love. We’re here when you need us and then when you get on your feet, thank you for helping us with your time or money donation or your bear being tossed on the ice.

“Everyone is in a different place at different times in their lives so it makes me feel good when I hear stories like that. I think that’s what keeps us going.”

She noted that everyone has their own special ability, and there can be ways to help out the organization. For instance, if someone wants to knit some mitts and hats, they can receive tax receipts for the wool they purchase.

“Everyone has a different talent in a different area and we end up benefiting from it so that we can share it with other families who are in need at the time,” Wright said. “Everyone has a vulnerable time in their life so it’s good to support that so that they can carry on and become stronger citizens in Westman.”

COMMUNITY LEGACY

The Wheat Kings always hold back some bears to send to youngsters in the hospital over the Christmas break. Happily, there are years when nobody fits that description.

A second wrinkle is the teams aren’t technically allowed to contact the players when they’re on their holiday break, but they’ve had no trouble getting volunteers anyway.

“Our Wheat Kings have always taken such pride in being great community leaders first, that we have never had an issue with a Wheat King volunteering his time to go and do these kind of visits,” Falkevitch said. Giving back seems to be baked into the team’s DNA at this point.

They have a number of major community initiatives, including:

• Read To Succeed — Player read to kids and talk about the importance of education and give the kids a free ticket. They take place two or three times per month.

• Minor Hockey Caravan — Four players head to a nearby community outside Brandon and join every ice practice session. The team generally does it four times per season.

• Minor Hockey ambassador program — Every single minor hockey team in Brandon is visited by a Wheat King, with that player assigned to the team for the season. Each player ends up getting a couple of teams each, with an organizational total of hundreds of hours volunteered.

• The Wheat Kings also have relationships with a number of community organizations, from the Special Olympics to Volt hockey to Samaritan House to Brandon Humane Society to the Brandon Cadets, with many one-off or semi-regular appearances.

Falkevitch said the Wheat Kings are one of the most community-active franchises in the WHL.

“Our team is very historically significant, not just on the ice but in the community,” Falkevitch said. “The Wheat Kings mean something to Westman, and it goes far beyond the product on the ice. It becomes engrained in what we are.”

Murray said it has to be.

“The Wheat Kings are a big part of Brandon,” Murray said. “I think it’s the responsibility of a hockey player to get yourself involved with the community, whether you’re going to a school or your billet’s hockey practice. It’s just being available.

“One of the things we tell our guys when they first come to town, is you need to understand these kids look up to you. You’re their NHL star. When you’re in a restaurant or at the movies or at the mall, they know you play for the Brandon Wheat Kings, so there’s a standard to be held there.

“We want to carry ourselves in a great light and do whatever we can to have engagement with people in our community so it’s a positive one.”

Ravndahl, who scored a goal he’ll never forget on Nov. 7, is a 19-year-old farm kid from Birch Hills, Sask.

He gets what the team means to the city and what the city means to the team, noting the Wheat Kings simply have to connect with the community, whether that’s with the teddy bear toss or with any of their community appearances.

“Brandon is a small town, and the city is what drives us,” Ravndahl said. “It keeps us going, so we want to do whatever we can to give back and get out.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson