While war rages, Ukraine hockey players take refuge in Poland

A GoFundMe initiative has been established to help pay the costs for 67 players and their families, who are being housed at a sports school after a tournament in Hungary

A total of 67 players and their families are being housed at a sports academy operated by Poland’s Hockey Development Foundation.

It’s Day 33 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and for Mark Vytvytskyy, watching his homeland get bombed in real time has become a normal part of his day. He hasn’t exactly become desensitized to it, but being exposed to a constant barrage of attacks has certainly reduced the shock value, which is sad. “I can see live cameras from Kyiv and as the bombardments are happening, I can see it live, which is unbelievable,” Vytvytskyy said. “For the first week or 10 days, you’re in shock. You get used to the ugly things.”

Mark Vytvytskyy is, among other things, part of the ownership group of the Reps (formerly Mississauga Reps) hockey club in the Greater Toronto Hockey League. A medical doctor, he came to Canada from Ukraine 10 years ago and established a digital health company called MiB Healthcare Solutions. He’s on the board of the Canadian-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress Two weeks ago, he was in Poland helping both organizations set up an office to deal with the influx of refugees from Ukraine.

While the conflict rages on, much of the hockey world watches and probably feels helpless. But there are people in the game who are getting involved, from former NHLer Dmitri Khristich, who is on the front lines fighting, to American Hockey League referee Dre Barone, who has been driving a rented nine-passenger van from the Ukrainian-Polish border, shuttling refugees and supplies.

And then there’s Vytvytskyy and Jari Byrski, a Toronto-based skills coach who is originally from Poland and has extended family in Ukraine. The two have set up a GoFundMe to help 67 Ukrainian hockey players aged 14-18 who have found refuge in Poland along with their families. It started when a team of 14-year-olds from Kharkiv in the northeast part of Ukraine went to play in a hockey tournament in Debrecen, Hungary. They left Feb. 19 and their country was invaded by Russia five days later. They returned briefly to Lviv in western Ukraine and from there were shuttled to Sanok, Poland, where Poland’s Hockey Development Foundation took them in. More Ukrainian players and their families were allowed to join them and there are now 67 players and 138 Ukrainians total  from Lutsk, Odesa and Kramatorsk staying at a sports school in Sanok.

But funds are running low. It costs about $30 per day to accommodate each person, and the players and their families are hoping to stay for at least another two months. That puts the total cost to almost $250,000, which Byrski and Vytvytskyy are hoping to raise with the GoFundMe effort. Former NHLer Wojtek Wolski, with whom Byrski worked for years, donated $1,000. Player agent Darren Ferris put in $500, an amount that was matched by the Quartexx Management, which represents more than 50 NHL players. Some of the players arrived in Poland with their grandparents with only backpacks, so Byrski and Ferris are trying to secure gear from some of the major equipment companies that can be shipped to Poland.

Not only have the players and their families found a safe haven, the players are able to continue to practice and take part in development sessions at the sports school. And when the players are on the ice, at least for a few hours a day they can take a respite from the tragedy that is unfolding at home. “Everything is based on how your brain is wired,” Vytvytskyy said. “And if we can give those kids the opportunity of having a few hours of non-war thinking time and some time away from scrolling on their phones, that’s a huge game-changer because it allows them to normalize at least some of their life. It all takes away that darkness and the more we can get those kids out of the TV and out of the phone…”

Nobody knows where this is all going and what will happen in the coming months, but both Vytvytskyy and Byrski are hoping to buy at least two months of peace for some players and their families. Beyond that, they are looking at the possibility of bringing some of them to Canada in the future. Vytvytskyy is in the process of having his parents come to Canada to get away from the war. They live in Lviv, which was at one time a safe place for those fleeing the invasion because it had been spared the Russian assault. But over the weekend, the city was rocked by explosions from Russian missile strikes on fuel storage facilities.

“It looks like (the Russians) are now very strategically hitting the military and infrastructure targets in western Ukraine,” Vytvytskyy said. “But it also might be a (precursor) to the Belarusian forces to step in from the north. From what we’ve seen, they start with a big offensive with missiles, then they continue with artillery, then it’s tanks and troops, and western Ukraine is getting more of that. This is a line of no return. It’s a hate, it’s a disgust and it’s something I will never forget in my lifetime.”