Bailey’s Daily: How I’ll Be Remembering Johnny Gaudreau

In Saturday’s edition of Bailey’s Daily, I’ll be reflecting on my own memory of former Philadelphia Flyers youth star Johnny Gaudreau, as he and his younger brother, Matt Gaudreau, tragically lost their lives to the selfish actions of an alleged drunk driver on Thursday night.

My journey into hockey started around the same time Johnny Gaudreau broke onto the scene.

My team growing up, the New Jersey Devils, made that magical run to the 2012 Stanley Cup Final, only to run into the human brick wall that was Jonathan Quick. After Zach Parise left and Ilya Kovalchuk retired and went home to Russia, I didn’t have a lot to cheer about.

So, even though I was brand new to hockey and had a team, I started watching random teams just for the fun of it. Whoever was playing on NHL Network, whether it was a rerun or not, was good enough.

I vividly remember the early days of the Colorado Avalanche, when Flyers general manager Danny Briere was finishing his playing career alongside Jarome Iginla and Nathan MacKinnon and Gabriel Landeskog were breaking into the league.

John Tortorella, Henrik Lundqvist, and the New York Rangers continued to be a menacing force in the Eastern Conference, even though they had to take some brutal postseason losses on the chin.

I loved players like P.K. Subban, Drew Doughty, Carey Price, Pekka Rinne, Patrick Kane, Sidney Crosby, Pavel Datsyuk, Marian Hossa, Patrice Bergeron, Alexander Ovechkin, Henrik Zetterberg, and more. I could go on and on. The chances were, if you were good at hockey or did something memorable in a game, I liked you.

Hell, I even liked Claude Giroux in his early Flyers days!

Gaudreau eventually came along at the end of the 2013-14 season, scoring for the Calgary Flames in his NHL debut against the Vancouver Canucks. I didn’t watch the game, but it was all I heard about on Twitter. I thought to myself, ‘All this for a fourth-round pick?’

That fourth-round pick turned out to be pretty good. The Devils picked Reid Boucher a few spots before Gaudreau in the 2011 draft. You don’t need to be Einstein to know that one didn’t turn out well, for more reasons than one.

In due time, Gaudreau, a diminutive winger that traditional scouts wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole, put his name up there with stars like Kane, Zetterberg, Ovechkin, Crosby, and others.

I still have this image in my head of former Flames captain Mark Giordano on the ice with Gaudreau during a game against the Dallas Stars, and it was really late at night for me. I had NHL Network running from my cable box to my Xbox One, and from there, I’d shut the lights off and watch until I fell asleep.

My (grandmother’s) cat, Mittens, would lie on my legs as I strained to look at the screen from my side.

This was my routine for nearly two years. Hockey was my escape from real-world problems. If a game was on, I watched.

My parents had split towards the end of 2014, so I lived with my mom at my grandmother’s house. “Choosing” a parent really sucked.

Because of the move, and because I wanted to graduate grade school with my friends, we’d drive over an hour to school every morning. After school, I usually went to a friend’s house. My mom would drive 30 minutes from work to pick me up, and then over an hour back home. We’d be lucky to get five hours of sleep some nights.

The friends in question were Rangers fans, so I remember watching Alec Martinez score that Stanley Cup-clinching goal against Lundqvist and the Rangers in 2014. I got no sleep that night. It was awesome.

Sorry, Torts.

Johnny Gaudreau really strengthened my connection to hockey. He was a small prospect getting big hype online, and he lived up to and exceeded it all. It was cool to me to see a fourth-round pick from New Jersey be as good as Gaudreau was, despite all the size disadvantages, even if my young teenage self couldn’t point out Gloucester or Salem County on a map.

Monmouth County and Ocean County were more my speed.

My father passed away on Oct. 4, 2015, right before Gaudreau’s first of many truly elite NHL seasons brought Calgary back to the Stanley Cup playoffs.

He texted me late the night before he passed, asking me if I was awake, but I chose not to answer in order to sleep. I’ll never know what my father wanted to ask, and I have to bear that shame for the rest of my life. I empathize with the Gaudreau family and the friends of Johnny and Matt; I understand what it’s like to lose someone suddenly without getting to say goodbye.

It never goes away, but over time, it gets easier.

No matter what, I always had Gaudreau, and hockey in general, there for me when I needed them.

And for whatever reason, I’ll always remember that image of Giordano, Gaudreau, and the Flames playing the Stars.

That Flames era was just fun as a casual fan. Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, prime Giordano, Mikael Backlund, T.J. Brodie, Dougie Hamilton, Sam Bennett, Michael Frolik, Kris Russell. I think I’ve heard of that Garnet Hathaway guy before.

I’ll always remember Johnny Gaudreau as the first prospect I attached myself to as a fan. It was incredible to watch him blossom into a star during an NHL career and a life that was cut way too short. The funny and heartwarming stories that keep coming out about the late, great Johnny Hockey are testaments to his morals, his personality, his hard work, and his love for others.

During some of my darkest days, Johnny gave me something I’ll always remember. Thank you, 13.