Angry feud erupts at eerie new Netflix show as families of devastating tragedy claim their agony is being exploited in stinging attack

Each morning begins and every night ends the same way for Scott Thomas: with his late son Evan at the forefront of his mind.

Eight years ago, the 18-year-old was killed alongside 15 others when a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team collided with a semi-trailer at a rural intersection in Saskatchewan, Canada. Another 13 were injured.

The tragedy became one of the deadliest traffic collisions in Canada's history and sent the nation plunging into a period of mourning.

For Thomas, it has never ended. He lives with a persistent physical ache of a life divided between what came before April 6, 2018, and all that has come after it.

There has been a divorce. A daughter forever changed by the loss of her older brother and best friend. And for him, the constant replaying of the sequence of events that brought him to the crash scene.

It's a sequence he can retrace almost second by second: a left-hand turn, ambulances rushing past, helicopters overhead, then arriving at a police barricade and being told he could go no farther. 

Evan died on impact. He was buried ten days later.

Now, Netflix is preparing to bring an eerily similar tragedy to the screen – only with a markedly different ending.

Netflix's upcoming drama The Sticks follows a small-town Minnesota hockey team devastated when a bus crash kills several players and its celebrated coach. His grieving widow, played by Michelle Monaghan, is then tasked with rebuilding a team of 'battered and broken young men' and, ultimately, helping the town turn its grief into triumph, according to a synopsis of the show.

In a statement to the Daily Mail, Netflix insisted the series is fictional and was not inspired by any real-life event.

But for Thomas and other families still living with the consequences of Humboldt, the parallels are difficult to miss – and it is what comes after the crash in Netflix's proposed fictional story that troubles him most.

Where Hollywood can shape tales of grief into manufactured arcs of redemption and roll credits on a triumphant ending, Thomas says real life has afforded his family no such luxury.

'There is no triumph in any of this,' he told the Daily Mail. 'And there never will be.'

Thomas first learned of The Sticks earlier this year when a Canadian reporter contacted him asking for his reaction.

He spent several hours researching the show and was immediately struck by what he regarded as an accumulation of uncomfortable similarities.

Thomas rejects Netflix's denial, arguing there are too many coincidences for The Sticks not to have been influenced, at least in part, by the 2018 tragedy.

'That's weak at best,' Thomas said. 'Unless you've completely had your head buried in the sand for the last eight years… there's no way people at Netflix didn't know about this, or at least someone in their chain of command must've noticed the similarities.

'Then again, I'm under no illusion that some big American conglomerate gives a rat's a** about these Canadian families. I'm not that naive… but I am disappointed.'

A request seeking comment on the claims and remarks made by Thomas in this story has not yet been returned by Netflix. 

Thomas does not believe Netflix needed his permission to tell a fictional story that resembles his own. The Humboldt crash was, after all, a public event and remains a dark milestone in Canada's recent history, he notes.

What he cannot understand, however, is why nobody apparently thought to warn or consult the families whose experiences will very likely be reflected back at them on screen.

Further compounding his frustration, he says, is that it appears The Sticks will take grief familiar to families like his and reshape it into something cleaner, more uplifting and ultimately more palatable.

'If anybody watches this show and draws any parallels to Humboldt at all and says, 'Oh, that's okay, everybody's fine now,' well, we're not,' he said. 'And we never will be.

'If you're going to tell the story, tell the real story. Don't switch the premise halfway through and create something about this team rising from the ashes like a phoenix… because that's just a complete departure from reality.'

Criticism of The Sticks first emerged in January, when the show and its premise were announced.

Like Thomas, other Humboldt families publicly accused Netflix of cutting uncomfortably close to their own tragedy.

Michelle Straschnitzki, whose son Ryan was left paralyzed in the crash, told Global News Canada the premise appeared to 'sensationalize' what happened to the Broncos and warned that it was 'not their story to tell.'

Her husband Tom similarly accused Netflix of taking advantage of the families' grief, while Tyler Cameron, whose son Graysen survived with a broken back, told SaskNOW that merely learning of the series had been 'hurtful' and triggering.

Thomas was among the earliest to object, saying at the time that learning of the project made his 'heart sink' and felt like being 'punched in the face.'

Months later, with the show now in post-production and the first images from set shared earlier this week, Thomas's view has only hardened.

He now fears The Sticks could do more than anger or upset the families and survivors – it could retraumatize them.

He worries particularly about Christina Haugan, whose husband, Broncos head coach Darcy Haugan, was among those killed.

In The Sticks, the coach's widow is a central character charged with rebuilding the shattered hockey team.

'My goodness, how's Christina going to feel about that?' Thomas said. 'I worry for Christina.'

He also worries about the young men who survived the crash and have decades still to live with its physical and psychological consequences.

For Thomas, there is an important distinction between revisiting tragedy truthfully and reinventing its aftermath.

He believes people can – and must – find a way to keep living after unimaginable loss. But he rejects the Hollywood notion that moving forward means grief has been conquered, much less transformed into triumph.

His own journey has taught him the difference.

The morning after the crash, after barely sleeping, Thomas sat at his kitchen table with his father and watched the sun rise through an east-facing window.

'If there's ever a f***ing day in the history of the world where the sun shouldn't have come up, it did,' he recalled.

'You don't move on, you never move on, but you do have to move forward… to find a way to exist because the sun keeps rising.'

While he would still take a call from Netflix, Thomas doesn't expect one and believes it is too late for an apology to undo the hurt.

And when The Sticks is eventually released sometime next year, he doesn't expect to be watching. More than that, he would prefer others didn't either.

'I don't think they can put this genie back in the bottle,' he said. 'But I would encourage people not to watch it.

'That's all I'd ask, because then maybe Netflix realizes they made a mistake - but people will do what they want.'

Since losing Evan, Thomas has devoted much of his time to keeping his son's story alive and celebrating the bright, wise and loving person he was during their all-too-short 18 years together.

Through the Evan Thomas Memorial Trust, his family has helped fund scholarships for young athletes and donated to the hospital where the injured Broncos were treated, as well as STARS Air Ambulance, whose crews helped save survivors.

Young local hockey players still wear stickers bearing Evan's name on their helmets – a small but meaningful way, Thomas says, of keeping his son's memory alive in the minds of a new generation.

And that matters because to Thomas, Evan was so much more than simply one of 16 victims in a national tragedy.

He remembers his son as an 'old soul'; calm, thoughtful and naturally intelligent, with a sharply sarcastic sense of humor and an ability to make those around him smile.

He was a good athlete, his father says, but what Evan loved most was being part of something larger than himself.

'He just loved being a teammate,' Thomas said.

That is the story Thomas wants preserved: the life his son lived, the person he was, and the future he and those who loved him were denied.

'It's tragic for the families and for the boys and staff who lost their lives, and it's tragic for the ones who survived and now have to live this reality for the rest of their lives,' Thomas said.

'There's no triumphs here. None whatsoever.'