HUMBOLDT, Canada—When a snowstorm hit this small farming community in central Saskatchewan recently, residents hired the boys from the town’s junior hockey team, the Humboldt Broncos, to dig them out. Team members played floor hockey once a week with special-needs adults, took younger children out trick-or-treating on Halloween and volunteered in the elementary schools.
The outsize role of the 25-member team in this town of 5,800 has compounded the grief and shock of Friday’s accident, in which a bus carrying the team collided...