COLUMBUS, Ohio — About 25 minutes before the Columbus Blue Jackets were scheduled to start practice on Monday in Nationwide Arena, goaltenders Elvis Merzlikins and Daniil Tarasov emerged through the tunnel to take the ice for early work with goaltending coach Niklas Bäckström.
Right behind the goalie group was Guy Gaudreau, the father of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, who died tragically two months ago when they were struck by a car while riding bicycles on a rural state highway in Oldmans Township, N.J., near their childhood home.
Gaudreau, in town ahead of the Blue Jackets’ home opener, arrived early at Nationwide on Tuesday following an invite from the team.
“I’ve been told that Johnny was a rink rat,” Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason said. “Well, the apple does not fall far from the tree. (Guy) just wanted to be on the ice. He wanted to be here. It looked on the ice like he was just having a blast. He had his gear on early. He saw Nik head out and he asked if he could go, too.
“We finished practice and I told him, anytime you want to come out (on the ice) with us, you’re more than welcome. He said, ‘Are you having a morning skate tomorrow?’ So he’s coming out (on Tuesday), too. He wants to be around. And it’s fantastic to have him.”
Tuesday’s game against the Florida Panthers will not celebrate the opening of a new season. Instead, it will celebrate the memory of the Gaudreau brothers. It figures to be an emotional evening in Nationwide Arena, with Guy and other members of his family present for a pregame ceremony.
It’s fitting that the game will be against the Panthers, who won the Stanley Cup last spring. One of Florida’s top players is Matthew Tkachuk, who became extremely close with Gaudreau during their seasons together in Calgary.
The idea to have Guy Gaudreau join them for practice was sparked by former Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella, who invited Gaudreau to take the ice with his Philadelphia Flyers one day last month during training camp. As with the Flyers, the Blue Jackets players seemed energized by his presence.
“Guy’s on my mind, in my heart, all the time,” said center Sean Monahan, who signed a free-agent deal with Columbus over the summer, in part to play with Johnny Gaudreau, a former teammate in Calgary. They dreamed of raising their kids together in Columbus. “He’s a special person and obviously a great dad. Guy was a great coach for his kids. (Having him on the ice with us), it brings emotions. It’s nice to have him here in good spirits.”
The Blue Jackets have been tight-lipped about any specifics of tonight’s ceremony. But even if the coaches and players had a script, it’d be hard to predict the range of emotions they’ll experience.
In the days following the tragedy, the Blue Jackets held a vigil outside the main entrance to Nationwide attended by several players and a few thousand fans. A memorial service followed, including heart-wrenching eulogies from Johnny’s widow, Meredith, and Matthew’s widow, Madeline.
Now comes a chance for the Blue Jackets to honor him in the arena he helped pack the previous two seasons. A sold-out crowd of 18,144 (or more) is expected, with thousands of others watching locally on Bally Sports Ohio, and nationally and internationally on NHL Network and ESPN+.
“To be honest, I’m not sure (what to expect),” Monahan said. “I don’t have an answer. We’re going to step on the ice … you play for John. If he was here, he’d be really excited for a day like this, the home opener. So we have to be excited for it.
“You never know when the emotions are going to come. They come in waves. When I think about John, I think about how easy-going he was, how he loved to play the game. So you keep that in the back of your mind when you’re out there.”
Under Evason, and with guidance from many of the Blue Jackets’ veteran players, an incredibly tight bond has begun to form in the dressing room, many players have said. They have embraced Gaudreau’s memory and spoken openly and honestly about him. His No. 13 sweater is kept in his stall, at home and on the road.
Defenseman Erik Gudbranson played with Gaudreau in Calgary, too, before signing with the Blue Jackets as a free agent on the same day as Gaudreau in 2022.
“There are going to be some tough moments, no doubt about it,” Gudbranson said. “We still miss him. But once the puck drops, you take all that energy and all those emotions and you put it into a great effort and bring back two points.”
Evason’s only advice to players is to allow themselves to feel their emotions instead of fighting them, even if it can seem overwhelming. He has preached this mantra since the start of training camp, but he’s emphasizing it for Tuesday.
“Everybody’s going to go through it and they’re going to have their own emotions and feelings,” Evason said. “Everyone is going to express it differently, as far as how they’ll react to situations. That’s fine. We’ve talked to our group about this.
“Let go. If you need to cry, then cry. If you need to talk about Johnny, we’ll talk. If you want to just giggle about things, we’ll giggle. This is an unprecedented thing that none of us wanted to go through, that nobody ever wants to. But we have to.
“We’re going to have an emotional day (on Tuesday), but we’re going to use that emotion and turn it into energy for us.”
Even among the lingering sadness of Gaudreau’s loss, the Blue Jackets — through training camp, the preseason and now early in the regular season — have not played or practiced as if a cloud looms over them. They’ve been a high-energy group that seems to be having fun so far this season.
They probably deserved a better fate last Thursday, when they opened the season with a 3-2 loss in St. Paul, Minn., against the Minnesota Wild. Two nights later, however, they came up with a surprise 6-4 win in Denver over the Colorado Avalanche.
There have been moments of great levity, too.
After Saturday’s win, Monahan showed up for his postgame television interview wearing the hat from a donkey costume. Gaudreau, apparently, was fond of calling his friends and teammates “donkeys” as a sign of affection. If he called you a “donkey,” you knew you were tight.
“He called me a donkey probably a million times,” Monahan said with a chuckle.
After one of the Blue Jackets’ preseason games, Evason, who was hired in late June, asked the holdover members of his coaching staff what postgame tradition the organization had for celebrating wins. For the past several years, the Jackets have passed about a Civil War-era kepi to the player of the game.
Evason wondered if they could change that routine to something that would honor Gaudreau, so he set up a meeting with Boone Jenner the following day.
“I started my conversation, and Boone said: ‘You want something different? We want something different, too. We already ordered it.’”
Jenner, ever the captain, purchased donkey costumes from Amazon and Halloween websites, he said, but the one players chose came from Etsy.
A new tradition in honor of 13 ❤️💙
Only fitting that Monny wears the donkey for our first dub🎉 pic.twitter.com/M9brYCATdt
— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) October 13, 2024
At the end of Monday’s 90-minute practice, Evason gave Guy Gaudreau the reins for a drill they often use to end practice. The players gather at one end of the ice and a player is chosen to fire a puck at the goal on the opposite end. If he scores, they take one lap. If he misses, they take three.
It is called the “Johnny skate,” Evason said.
Guy, who has spent hours upon hours in rinks round New Jersey and Philadelphia, is known to have led Johnny and Matthew on many difficult skating drills, even after they turned pro and came home in the summer. He went full bore on Tuesday, too.
“I asked Guy if he’d like to take the shot,” Evason said, “and he said, ‘I’ll miss it on purpose.’ And he did.”
The players took three laps, then circled back and gathered with coaches to surround Gaudreau for an end-of-practice photo.
The Gaudreau family will be surrounded tonight, taken into the embrace of an adoring fan base that will never forget Gaudreau’s decision, as the most sought-after free agent on the market in 2022, to choose Columbus as his team for the prime of his career. The crowd will be full of No. 13 sweaters and Johnny Hockey T-shirts.
The Gaudreaus have repeatedly thanked fans in Columbus, Calgary and across the hockey world for their support, saying their messages and memories of Johnny and Matthew have sustained them through their grief.
The memorial service and the vigil were so quiet you could hear sniffles and sobbing in the crowd. There will be tears tonight, too, but the cheers and love will overwhelm them. That’s the plan, anyway.
(Top photo of Guy Gaudreau, left, and Dean Evason courtesy of the Columbus Blue Jackets)
