So this is about Johnny Gaudreau, a magical little player who hockey first knew about, in lights, when he was a star at Boston College playing so much bigger than he really was. And the only way to describe what he could do with a puck on his stick is to use as much of a BC reference as there is in this world: On the ice Gaudreau was another athlete who was supposed to be too small to be as great as he was. That athlete, of course, is Doug Flutie. Johnny Gaudreau even had one of the best nicknames you will ever hear, a nickname as cool as he always was on the ice:
He was Johnny Hockey.
Only now he is gone at the age of 31 because he and his brother Matthew, once his teammate at BC, were mowed down by an alleged drunk driver on County Road 551 in south Jersey about 8:30 on Thursday night, the night before Johnny and Matthew were supposed to be groomsmen at their sister Katie’s wedding. There is only lousy timing, terrible timing, when a tragedy like this literally runs over a whole family the way this one did Thursday night. But the timing of this, before their sister’s wedding, even made this particular tragedy more gutting, and more unimaginable.
I didn’t watch a lot of Johnny Gaudreau’s games once he got to the NHL, first with the Calgary Flames and then the Columbus Blue Jackets, who signed him to a seven-year contract worth $68 million two summers ago, but Johnny Hockey, even past 30 now, was still that kind of dazzling talent as a winger. But I sure watched him enough when he was still playing hockey for my school, enough to know that he was more than just a streak of light on skates. He really was Flutie, that creative and playing with that much flair. Always playing bigger than he really was.
He won the Hobey Baker Award as the best player in college hockey. He won a national championship at BC. He probably only played an extra year at the school so that he could play with his brother.
There have been other great hockey players at BC, in what became such an amazing program under the great Coach Jerry York, a legend of the sport. There was never a better or more exciting one than Johnny Gaudreau. Now he is another athlete was has died young, under heartbreaking circumstances like these. It wasn’t just that he and his brother were going to be groomsmen at their sister’s wedding, obviously postponed now. Johnny’s wife, Meredith, was going to be one of the maids of honor.
All of that changed in the bike lane on County Road 551 because an impatient and allegedly over-served driver apparently got impatient and decided to pass an SUV on the right and killed Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Gaudreau, who never had a chance.
Now Johnny Gaudreau, who had been in the midst of what was turning into such a fine second act of his pro career in Columbus, who had become such a fan favorite there, is 31 forever.
He was at Boston College with my two youngest sons, both of whom knew him. And what they always said was that the biggest sports star of the whole school, because BC has always been a hockey school, was popular with everyone. The guy whom so many others on campus wanted to be was always just one of the guys.
Now, on the night before his sister’s wedding, he is gone, dead for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time along with his brother. He was a husband and father to two small children. He was a brother and a son to the father who a long time ago taught him how to skate at a place called the Hollydell Ice Arena in Sewell, N.J. All sports dreams begin somewhere. The dreams of the kid who would grow up to be Johnny Hockey started at that rink in Sewell.
Just like that on Thursday night, perhaps an hour after sunset, on the eve of what was going to be perhaps the greatest day in the history of the Gaudreau family, Katie getting married and her sister and her brothers huge parts of it all, turned into the worst possible moment for this family. By Friday morning everyone who had learned of this tragedy and these two deaths felt as if they had been punched in the heart, as if this were somehow a death in their own families.
Two lane road in the night. A Jeep Cherokee passing on the right. And before long two brothers were dead and the driver of that Cherokee was at Salem County Correctional.
Again: I rooted for Johnny Gaudreau because I’m a BC guy and he was a BC kid, and you only had to watch him for about five minutes to realize what he was doing on the ice was different from what everybody else was going. My sons knew him personally. I just knew Johnny Hockey from watching him, watching him play a style of hockey that was always daring and artful and thrilling to watch, when he had the kind of talent that made you think he was going to be young forever.