Tears flowed in the locker room. Players hugged each other as high school teammates for the last time. Documentarian Tommy Haines was struck by the rawness of the emotions, even in a land where hockey is considered life.
"It was brutal. I felt for them," Haines said, adding that his crew eventually put their cameras down to console the players. "Coming into this, we didn't want to depict these kids as gladiators or expose all the stupid stuff they might do as teenagers. We wanted to show them as real people. Turn them into humans that the audience is rooting for.