Five months after a bus tragedy killed 16 players and coaching staff of the Humboldt Broncos, a Saskatchewan-based junior hockey league team, survivors of the incident presided over a ceremonial face-off commemorating the victims on Thursday.

Two of the players involved in the April 6, 2018, collision with a truck pulling a flatbed, Brayden Camrud and Derek Patter, made it back to the tiny town of Humboldt to take part in the face-off between the Broncos and the visiting Nipawin Hawks. Camrud and Patter were seriously injured in the accident as were the rest of the 13 survivors.

The Broncos lost the game 2-1, but that was not a huge surprise. The deaths and injuries forced the team to totally rebuild from scratch in order to ice a team of 24 players from 15 different communities in Saskatchewan. Many of those who landed spots on the Broncos knew members of the team who died at the secondary highway intersection in Saskatchewan last spring.

But managing to put a team together in time for the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League 2018-2019 season was seen as a miracle since their coach Darcy Haugan was also killed in the collision. Given that hockey is the top draw in the small town, management felt that putting the team back together would help the town heal and move forward after the tragedy.

The Broncos-Hawks matchup was the first time the Humboldt squad had taken part in a regular season game since the tragedy, which dominated sports headlines in Canada and the U.S. As proof of the magnitude of the game, national sports network TSN broadcast the game live, while a number of sports stations in the U.S. picked up the feed. Before the game, TSN aired a documentary on how Humboldt was trying to rebound from the tragedy.

That 13 people were killed in a road accident would be major news anywhere, but given how heavily the game of hockey has been ingrained into Canadian culture, the event tore at the heart of sports fans across the country. Almost immediately, a team that most people in the country had never heard of instantly became the recipient of thoughts, prayers, and tears from citizens across the nation.

RELATED: CANUCKS PROSPECT MICHAEL DIPIETRO'S HELMET PAYS TRIBUTE TO HUMBOLDT BRONCOS