Flowers, sticks, bags of Skittles and bottles of purple Gatorade make up a vigil outside Conte Forum, the home rink for “Johnny Hockey” when he and his brother played at Boston College, together, for one season.
A decade later, the deaths of John and Matthew Gaudreau have hit home in the BC hockey community where they made such an indelible impact. They will be laid to rest at a funeral service Monday outside Philadelphia, but their impact on the school in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, will not soon be forgotten, along with everything they did from New Jersey to Calgary to Columbus and beyond.
“Everybody knows how gifted they were on ice, especially Johnny — an all-world type of Olympic player and college All-Star — but both players brought so much excitement to our locker room and to the dormitories and just the academic environment of BC,” former coach Jerry York said. “They left tremendous impressions on all of us. We’ll miss the hockey exploits they always had with us but more important how they were as young guys.”
John was 31 and Matthew 29 when they were struck and killed the night of Aug. 29 while riding bicycles in their home state of New Jersey by a suspected drunken driver on the eve of their sister Katie’s wedding. Grief spread the following morning.
“We go into the gym and everyone’s got a pit in their stomach,” said Cutter Gauthier, who helped BC reach the Frozen Four final this past spring before making his NHL debut with Anaheim. “He obviously had a huge legacy at Boston College. … To see that, it’s really heartbreaking.”
The eldest Gaudreau brother was a point-a-game player as a freshman when he and the Eagles won the national title in 2012. The Calgary Flames, who drafted him a year earlier in the fourth round as an undersized prospect with plenty of talent, tried that summer and the next to convince the family John was ready to turn pro.
Then-Flames general manager Jay Feaster knew as soon as Matthew committed to BC that there was no chance of getting John to Calgary before the brothers got the chance to play together. That season was Gaudreau’s best, leading the country with 36 goals, 44 assists and 80 points, and earning the Hobey Baker Award as the NCAA’s top player.
“He was someone that I grew up watching,” said Macklin Celebrini, the 2023 Hobey Baker winner at Boston University and the No. 1 NHL draft pick by San Jose. “It’s a tragedy. You never really expect something like that to happen, and even if you don’t really know him that well, it hits you hard.”
BC coach Greg Brown said everyone around the program has been in a fog since learning of the news. That extends to BC alumni, too.
“You just don’t get over things like this,” said Kevin Stevens, who played there in the 1980s before a lengthy pro career in the NHL. “This is going to affect a lot of people, and myself, for a long time.”
Will Smith grew up in Massachusetts a self-professed “BC superfan” and said Gaudreau was his idol. Asked what John meant to the school, Smith responded, “Everything.”
“Even his nickname, ‘Johnny Hockey,’ it’s something that will live on forever,” Smith said this week at the NHLPA rookie showcase. “He was a really special player for that program.”
Smith, now with the Sharks, got the chance to play alongside Gaudreau with the U.S. at the world championships in Prague earlier this year and learned as much off the ice as on it.
“He was always making us laugh,” Smith said. “The one day we went golfing — a little BC group — it was Kevin Hayes, Johnny, Ryan Leonard and myself. It was just a day we went out there, played golf and it was one of those days I’ll remember.”
BC associate coach Mike Ayers remembered an interaction long after Gaudreau turned pro and became an NHL star, seeing him inexplicably stopping and starting his car on campus — in order to play “Pokémon GO” on his phone.
“That was him. That was just his way of having fun,” Ayers said. “He was just a happy-go-lucky kid.”
Since their deaths, Ayers has been talking more about how John and Matthew handled themselves outside hockey than what they did in the sport they loved.
“Matty was a leading scorer here his senior year,” Ayers said. “He was a big-time player for us, and obviously Johnny had a million accolades, but you would never know it by seeing them or interacting with them. They were just down-to-earth good people.”
The hockey spoke for itself. Lane Hutson, a Montreal prospect who played the past two seasons at Boston University said of Gaudreau, “Every time he touched the puck, it was a highlight reel.”
Sometimes when he spoke, too. Pittsburgh’s Rutger McGroarty, who went to Michigan, rewatched Gaudreau’s Hobey Baker acceptance speech and has heard plenty about what he was like as a person from best friend Adam Fantilli, a teammate of John’s with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
“The stuff that he said about him: just not one bad thing to say about the guy,” McGroarty said. “Just a smile on his face every day, coming in, laughing but also got to work.”
The games go on at BC. The school observed a moment of silence for the Gaudreau brothers — as well as Tony Voce, a former BC hockey player and Philadelphia Flyer who also died this summer — before Saturday’s home football game against Duquesne.
The college season begins next month, as it does in the NHL and across the sport. The pain of the losses of the Gaudreaus will remain.
“It’s going to be a tough one,” Stevens said. “That’s a hard one. That’s going to wear on us for a long time.”
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