Jeremy Schaap
NEWTON, Massachusetts — There is a prayer board in the Boston College Eagles’ hockey dressing room. Before this season, three names were written on it and remain there.
Tony Voce
Johnny Gaudreau
Matthew Gaudreau
Around the turn of the 21st century, Voce was a high-scoring Eagles forward and twice the team MVP. Last summer, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 43.
Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau also died last summer, a few weeks after Voce. Johnny was 31, two years older than Matthew. Both had been stars on the ice at Boston College — and they died as they had lived so much of their lives.
Together.
They were killed riding their bikes on a country road in southern New Jersey, by a man who was allegedly driving under the influence. According to witnesses, the accused was driving aggressively, trying to get around another vehicle, and struck the Gaudreaus. That weekend, Johnny and Matthew were celebrating their sister’s wedding. Their wives were both pregnant.
When the news broke that Johnny — one of the NHL’s most electric players, a seven-time all-star with Calgary and Columbus — and Matthew — who had become a coach — had both been killed, the hockey universe reeled. People all over the world who knew nothing about hockey were saddened and dismayed. An unfathomable loss. Two young, athletic men, with decades of life ahead of them. Their wives made widows. Their children — the two already born and the two on the way — made fatherless. Their parents and sisters devastated.
On Chestnut Hill, too, the pain was acute and has remained so. The brothers had been instrumental figures in one of college hockey’s most successful programs. At Boston College, they left their marks — and their sudden loss has challenged the living to make sense of the tragedy.
Jerry York, the Eagles’ head coach from 1994 to 2022, said, “Some things are just unexplainable. I mean, you can look at why this, why that, but they’re just unexplainable.”
York won five national titles as a head coach, four at BC, his alma mater. The latest one might have been the most memorable, thanks in large part to the goal that freshman Johnny Gaudreau scored, clinching the championship game against Ferris State in 2012.
York still lights up thinking about it.
“I’m on the bench, it’s late in the game, we’re protecting a one-goal lead and the national championship is right there for us and I’m saying, ‘All right, Johnny, dump it and get off,'” York recalled. “You know, it’s two minutes left in the game and from the coach’s viewpoint the best play was to get it deep and change. And he just holds on to the puck, goes right [through] two or three players and puts it on the top shelf. I said, ‘Oh, Johnny, good play.'”
In fact, that goal is widely considered one of college hockey’s all-time highlights.
Unlike his brother, Matthew Gaudreau wasn’t an instant sensation at BC. Size was a factor. Johnny was slight — about 5-foot-9 and 150 pounds in college, but Matthew was even smaller — about the same height and, York said, only around 110 pounds as a freshman (he was listed as 135 on the team roster). His toughness, though, was off the charts.
“Just his ability to get up after some of the most vicious, bone-rattling hits I’ve ever seen in hockey, and get up and play, and that happened a number of times over his career, and he’s just a tough, hard-nosed kid,” York said.
As a senior, Matthew led the team in scoring.
Greg Brown, the former BC and NHL defenseman who succeeded York as head coach in 2022, was an assistant coach during the Gaudreaus’ time on Chestnut Hill. He heard the awful news early on the morning of Aug. 30, from Ted Donato, his counterpart at Harvard.
“Just such a loss,” Brown said. “I mean, really special kids. Anyone who knew them, you can’t help but, couldn’t help but smile every time you got to see them or interact with them. Just so positive, so happy all the time. Great smiles, great energy. And it’s just tragic to lose two quality people like that so young.
“You didn’t see one without the other, as tight as any brothers could be. They really loved to spend time with each other,” Brown said.
Brown’s team has spent most of the season as the No. 1 team in the country and begins its quest for a national championship Friday at 2 p.m. ET (ESPNU), when it plays Bentley in a regional semifinal in Manchester, New Hampshire.
For the Eagles, honoring the Gaudreaus and Voce has been part of their mission.
From a pregame ceremony in November, to the patches the players wear on their uniforms, to hanging Johnny’s Team USA jersey in the dressing room at the World Junior Championships in Ottawa, where six Eagles represented the U.S. and won gold medals.
Eamon Powell, a graduate student, is a Hockey East all-star defenseman from upstate New York. Like most of the current team, he did not know the Gaudreaus personally. But still, they are in his thoughts.
“I think each and every guy, if you were to ask him if we’re playing for them and trying to win for them, I’d say 100 percent because at the end of the day, you know, you play here for four years, but once you put that jersey on, you never take it off,” Powell said. “And I think they’d say the same exact thing if they were here right now.”
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For Powell, it’s about the passion with which the Gaudreaus played. The bond they shared. The suddenness of their deaths. All of that has been a lesson that goes beyond hockey.
“It’s kind of not taking anything for granted, and cherishing each and every day you have with each other,” he said.
