His brother was Johnny Hockey. He had the Matty Dance.
Ask any of Matthew Gaudreau’s childhood buddies about his moves, and they’ll chuckle knowingly.
Gaudreau and his group of friends, which included his older brother, John, loved country music, especially Kenny Chesney. They regularly tailgated before concerts in college and in the years that followed. The group gathered early those summer days. They ate Wawa breakfast sandwiches on the way in. They sipped beer in stadium parking lots, leaving red plastic cups scattered near the cooler, and grilled for dinner. These were all-day affairs.
And at some point, without a doubt, Matty Gaudreau would find his way onto the back of someone’s truck, often when a Chesney song blared over the speakers. He’d break out the Matty Dance.
“Just swinging his arms around in a circular, slow motion,” says friend Eric Robinson.
“Some version of a windmill with a hip thrust,” adds Hunter Brody.
They can still see it.
This is who Matthew Gaudreau was: a life-of-the-party presence, arms waving through the air. When his widow, Madeline, spoke at his funeral, she described him as so much more than a hockey player, coach and friend. That’s a consensus among people who loved him. He was someone who made a point to connect with others, be it his high school teachers or younger teammates at Boston College. Someone who never felt jealous of his older brother, a more skilled player who became an NHL star. Someone who cried when he heard his unborn son’s heartbeat for the first time.
On Aug. 29, Matthew and John — his closest friend — were biking in Oldmans Township, N.J., when a Jeep Grand Cherokee struck them from behind. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. John was 31, Matthew 29. Their sister Katie’s wedding was scheduled for the next day.
When talking about Gaudreau, those who knew him often slip into the present tense. His death is still so recent that, for some, it doesn’t feel real that he’s gone.
Perhaps it never will.
The Gaudreau brothers grew up in a white, two-story house in Penns Grove, N.J., a small town southwest of Philadelphia. They regularly hosted their friends for bonfires and evenings at the backyard pool. Brody, who grew close with Matthew in high school, felt like he was there every summer night when he was younger.
Matthew and John shared a bedroom overlooking the gravel driveway. Old hockey jerseys hung from the walls. When friends spent the night, the brothers pushed their beds together so more people could fit. Others would fight over air mattresses, trying to avoid the one with a hole in it. They’d get up in the mornings for training sessions and skates, then often find themselves back at the house again at night.
The Gaudreaus were as tight-knit a family as could be. Community mattered. Their house was the center of it all.
Matthew was slight in build. Friends remember waking up to Guy Gaudreau, his dad, whipping up breakfast. He’d pile eggs and bacon on Matthew’s plate, trying to help him put on weight. Sometimes Matthew would get so full he’d shove eggs to the family dog, Sadie, while Guy was looking away.
The weight never stuck. When teams took measurements, Matthew would sometimes stuff pucks in his jock strap to trick the scale. His wife said in her eulogy that she thought he looked 90 pounds when they met as teenagers.
The Gaudreau name carries weight in the South Jersey hockey community. Guy worked as the hockey director at Hollydell Ice Arena in Sewell, N.J., not far from Penns Grove. Dan Spencer, now an emergency backup goalie for the Flyers, calls Gaudreau the best coach he ever had. John Gaudreau, Eric Robinson, Buddy Robinson and Tony DeAngelo played at Hollydell growing up and went on to appear in NHL games. Plenty of other college players like Matthew started their careers there.
“There are a crazy number of people who came out of Hollydell for being a small rink in South Jersey,” says Eric Robinson, now a forward on the Hurricanes.
Boston College coach Jerry York once asked Guy how he taught Johnny and Matthew such good edge control. He replied that he trained them with Skittles. He’d throw one on the ice, and the boys would have to skate to it. Then he’d throw another.
On top of his responsibilities at Hollydell, Gaudreau coached the Gloucester Catholic High team. In 2009-10, Matthew’s freshman year and John’s junior year, the team went 15-4-2 and made its first-ever state championship. Though the Rams lost, both boys had a point in the final. Years later, Matthew would describe his days on the Gloucester team as the most fun he ever had playing hockey.
Close as they were, the brothers had different personalities. Principal Thomas Iacovone remembers John as the quieter of the two. He wanted to fade into the background. He wanted to be like any other kid.
“Matty wanted you to know he was there,” he says. “He did it in such a way that you couldn’t help but to love him.”
Iacovone was a history teacher when Matthew was in school and taught him in first-period homeroom his sophomore year. Matthew pulled his chair up to Iacovone’s desk seemingly every morning. They chatted about Philadelphia sports while waiting for the morning announcements. Rarely did the conversations revolve around Gaudreau himself.
“He would engage me in what he knew I liked, and I was the teacher,” Iacovone says. “It should’ve been the other way around.”
Once class began, Iacovone occasionally had to tell Gaudreau to sit down and be quiet. That was difficult, though; it usually resulted in Gaudreau cracking a joke that made him laugh. He was too charming to get in trouble, remembers now-athletic director Ryan Murphy, then an assistant athletic director.
Matthew left Gloucester Catholic early to play junior hockey in Omaha, where he met his wife and skated for the Lancers, a United States Hockey League club. In the week before moving away from New Jersey, he and Brody embarked on a morning fishing trip. They left at 5 a.m. Gaudreau was sad about leaving the friends he made at Gloucester Catholic, Brody remembers, but he was excited, too. This was a big step: at that age, junior hockey felt like the biggest thing in the world.
They stood in the dark, shoes muddy. Bugs bit their exposed skin as they cast their lines into the water. Their futures lay ahead of them.
Matthew Gaudreau with his friend Hunter Brody. (Courtesy Hunter Brody)
Matthew and John were determined to play college hockey together, and John found himself in a lurch in June 2011, months before his freshman year. He had committed to Northeastern, but coach Greg Cronin had just left for a job as a Maple Leafs assistant. The older Gaudreau brother got out of his letter of intent because of the coaching change, but then he needed to find a new school — and fast.
Not long after, the Gaudreau brothers and their parents were on Boston College’s campus. Future NHLer Kevin Hayes showed the boys around, York remembers, while he talked to the parents. After they were done, they stood in front of the rink.
“Well, what do you guys think?” York asked. “Any questions?”
John turned to his younger brother. That’s whose opinion mattered to him.
“Let’s go here,” Matthew replied.
And so they did. Their mother, Jane, said in a 2014 New York Times article that Matthew actually preferred Boston University, but he chose the Eagles when John gave him the final decision because he knew it was what his older brother wanted.
“He was kind of a dynamic presence in their relationship, almost like he was the older brother,” York says of Matthew. “Johnny looked for advice from Matty an awful lot.”
The decision had a major impact on both the program and the brothers. John was a point-per-game player as a freshman, two years before Matthew arrived on campus. The Eagles won the NCAA title that season. The season Matthew got to school, John won the Hobey Baker Award as the nation’s top collegiate player.
Matthew Gaudreau joined his brother John on the ice after Boston College won the 2014 Beanpot Tournament. (Richard T Gagnon / Getty Images)
Matthew played in only eight games that year. Not once, though, did he show a hint of jealousy.
“He was his No. 1 fan,” says teammate Mike Matheson, a now-Canadiens defenseman who was the grade between the brothers. “They were just inseparable.”
Though Matthew was not a lineup regular, he still had an important role with the team. Matheson remembers Matthew, aided by his relationship with John, acting as a bridge between the freshmen and upperclassmen. He made sure everyone was involved and did so throughout his time at Boston College. Classmate Ryan Fitzgerald describes him as “everybody’s first call.” Whenever someone wanted to do something, they called Matthew.
“As cliquey as he could have been, he was always setting stuff up for everybody, making sure everyone was there, making sure every guy was happy and comfortable,” says Zach Sanford, who was a year below Matthew.
Fitzgerald and Matthew lived together in six-person, on-campus suites their sophomore to senior years. One day rolled into the next: class, hockey and then hours on the couch talking the time away with their roommates. Those, Fitzgerald says, are memories he’ll always hold close.
Matthew and Madeline were managing long-distance dating at the time, and she would visit frequently. Fitzgerald loved seeing how his friend’s face lit up with her in the room. He jokes she was their mother roommate. The hockey players lived like, well, college boys. She was disgusted whenever she arrived. She’d tell Matthew and his friends they couldn’t keep living like this.
They’d all agree with her — temporarily, at least.
“And then she’d come back a month later, and it’d look like a bomb went off,” Fitzgerald says.
From a hockey perspective, sitting out most of his freshman year couldn’t have been easy for Matthew, who played more than 50 games each of the previous two seasons in Omaha. He didn’t let that show. York remembers him focusing through video work and prescouts of other teams, remaining ready at all times. This wasn’t a typical throwaway year for a kid who wasn’t playing much. He made sure to gain experience. Matheson describes Gaudreau as “the best I’ve ever seen” at handling being a scratch.
Fitzgerald doesn’t think he’d have handled it as well. But Matthew savored his year as college teammates with his brother.
Gaudreau’s attitude eventually paid off. He played in most games his sophomore and junior seasons, then never came out of the lineup as a senior. He was nearly a point-per-game player by graduation, scoring eight goals and 35 points in 40 games his final season with the Eagles.
Though his skill showed by the time he left Boston College, Matthew had different elements to his game than his brother. Despite his 5-foot-9, 137-pound frame, “he was a little s— disturber,” Fitzgerald says. He didn’t shy away from scrums. His senior season — the same year John won the NHL’s Lady Byng Trophy for gentlemanly conduct — Matthew was one of only two Boston College players with more than 50 penalty minutes.
Though similarly small, John was better at eluding contact, York remembers. Matthew would take huge hits. But he always seemed to get right back up, even when York prepared to send the trainers on the ice.
“It was like he had a heart of steel,” the coach says.
By the time Matthew graduated, he was ready to pursue professional hockey — something York thought seemed improbable at earlier points during his college career. He willed himself to that point.
Graduation itself was memorable for Fitzgerald. The night before, the hockey players skipped the senior class celebration, instead going out on their own.
“I don’t think any of us slept,” he says.
Wearing black robes the next day, Matthew and Fitzgerald, both communication majors, joined their classmates for a procession through campus. As they waited, a woman came by asking if anyone wanted to lead the students while holding a large, maroon Boston College flag over their head.
“I’ll do it!” Matthew called out.
Fitzgerald still laughs thinking about it. All these communications majors had probably spent the entire night before together, but there leading the way was Matthew Gaudreau, bags under his eyes from one last college all-nighter with his friends.
Matthew Gaudreau (left) carried the Boston College banner at graduation ceremonies. (Lee Pellegrini / Boston College)
Gaudreau carved out a professional playing career for as long as he could. Most of his games came in the ECHL, two rungs below the NHL, but he appeared in 21 AHL games, too, and also had a brief stint playing in Sweden.
Gaudreau looked like a hockey lifer, just like his dad. Ryan Murphy, the Gloucester Catholic athletic director, remembers Guy telling him at one point that Matthew would become a great coach. While with the ECHL team in Worcester, less than an hour out of Boston, he’d swing by his college to say hi to York and the Eagles. York, who was always impressed with how well Gaudreau observed the game, remembers his former player asking questions about coaching on those visits.
“The promise of life he had coming …” York says, trailing off.
When John emerged as an NHL player, he began hosting offseason skills camps for kids at Hollydell. Robinson remembers going to the locker room with the brothers before camps began. Without fail, John would ask Matthew what drills they should do. The friend group joked that the younger brother was becoming his dad.
“He had a knack for it,” Robinson says. “For whatever reason, some guys who play, they can transition into that.”
Gaudreau got his coaching start with Philadelphia Hockey Club, which practiced at — where else? — Hollydell Ice Arena. The next season, 2022-23, a new opportunity arose: Gloucester Catholic needed a new hockey coach. Matthew met with Iacovone and Ryan Meehan, then the athletic director, at an Italian restaurant near Hollydell. They talked for two hours, mainly about life outside of the sport. When it came to the job, Iacovone told Gaudreau he was his No. 1 choice — and he didn’t have a No. 2.
A few days later, Gaudreau accepted the position his dad once held. His goal was to make a career out of coaching, and he was on his way.
Guy joined his son’s staff as an assistant for 2022-23, and so did Spencer, his former Gloucester teammate. The team went 9-9-2 and made a run to the state semifinal. Billy Sheridan, a player on that team, remembers he could walk into Gaudreau’s office at any time and ask for help.
During his time as Gloucester coach, Gaudreau tried to get his players to recognize how special high school hockey is.
“You guys don’t realize it,” he’d tell them, “but this is going to be the best four years of your life.”
The next season was more difficult. Key players graduated, and the team’s numbers dipped to around a dozen. It was hard to hold complete practices with so few players, and Gaudreau himself had to miss at times because of commitments as an assistant coach for the Philadelphia Rebels, the Hollydell-based junior team.
Gloucester didn’t win a game that season. After it ended, Gaudreau met again with Iacovone. He felt it was best to step away. He couldn’t commit fully to the team and didn’t feel that was fair to the players. Plus, he had his first baby, Tripp, on the way. Life was going to get busy.
Madeline Gaudreau wore a pink dress with a white floral pattern as she stepped to the marble podium at St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in Media, Pa. During her eulogy, she spoke of her husband’s bond with John, how they loved sharing a bedroom growing up and never wanted it to change. It brings her comfort that they are still together.
“Anyone who knows Matty knows he was born to be a dad,” she said toward the end of the speech, stopping to compose herself.
The idea of fatherhood consumed Matthew. He asked John for advice, ordered books and researched diaper brands. Iacovone remembers how excited he was when he saw him over the summer.
Matthew never got to meet baby Tripp, who is due next month, according to Madeline’s Instagram account.
Tributes have rolled in since his death. Hollydell held a memorial for the boys. Gloucester Catholic did, too, during which the hockey team presented Guy and Jane with a jersey. Both the Flyers and Blue Jackets have given Guy the chance to help with team practices.
The Gaudreau family wanted loved ones to stop by their house in the days after John and Matthew’s deaths. People brought coffee and meals. During one visit, Brody went upstairs to Matthew and John’s old room, the site of their teenage sleepovers. It looked unchanged from when they were kids. He got the same feeling Madeline experiences when standing in baby Tripp’s nursery. They can feel Matthew with them.
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic. Photos: Mike Stobe / NHLI via Getty Images; Richard T Gagnon / Getty Images)
