Johnny Gaudreau – RIP

While I don’t live in the city of Buffalo, I still call it my city because it’s where I work, where I go to school, and where I interact with friends and family. My city has a special connection with both Canada and the Native Americans that live in the region. The city was built on Native American soil, taken through treaties with the Seneca and Iroquois tribes. It borders Canada, with three bridges connecting the two countries. Tim Horton’s, a popular coffee shop chain founded by hockey legend Tim Horton, resides in both Buffalo and Ontario. The border rivalry between Toronto and Buffalo is always fierce and always will be. These relations to the neighboring country and neighboring peoples, still living on reservations in Erie County and beyond, fostered connections to their preferred sports, hockey and lacrosse respectively. The Buffalo Bandits are the most successful indoor lacrosse franchise in American history, with a rabid fanbase that routinely sells out home games. If it weren’t for that income, the indoor box lacrosse league the Bandits play in would cease to exist. Indoor lacrosse in my country is only available to watch because of my team and city. But make no mistake about it, even with the Bandits success, my city is a hockey city through and through.

Having friends who play college hockey, or at least played hockey at the youth level, helps me understand the appeal of it. But I think an argument I heard back in 2015 best describes why people love hockey: it combines the best parts of all sport. There are crushing hits like in American football. Skill moves and goal scorers akin to wingers fooling their fullbacks in football. Also similar to football are the raucous crowds that make any playoff atmosphere different than any other sport.

I maintain playoff hockey is the pinnacle is sport and encourage you all to watch it next spring if you can. It’s an incredibly fast-paced sport with constant action, whether players are chasing down a loose puck or trying to lay a big hit on a forward charging down the wing. It’s funny we talk about players not wanting to play if they’re not 100% healthy in football, just look at any playoff hockey team’s injury list after a long season. There was a player last year who played in the Stanley Cup final with a broken ankle and a separated shoulder. The players’ desperation to win is on full display all the time, which makes the fans even more engaged in the display. To be so brutish of a game and yet so skillful to be gliding across the ice on skates makes hockey a wonder to behold. It’s a true working-class sport for a true working-class city, which is why hockey is adored in Buffalo. If only we had a good team worthy of our love for the game.

Johnny Gaudreau bucked the trend of what a hockey player was supposed to be. Hockey players are meant to be fast and skilled, but also big and physical, capable of taking hits and making hits. The best forwards are gifted with speed, playmaking ability and a hard fast shot. Johnny had all of that, but he wasn’t very big. Standing 5’9”, weighing only 165 lbs, the worry was that he’d get crushed at the NHL level. The skill was there, but would the body type hold up against defensemen that had 6 inches and 50-70 lbs on him? Gaudreau would only go on to have one of the greatest college careers ever, following that up with a steady ascent to the NHL’s elite, topping off a career season by getting a massive contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Johnny made it to the top, and in doing so provided an inspiration and a lesson to the hockey world at large.

The one thing that always struck me about Gaudreau was how much he enjoyed the game. It’s not very often you see a hockey player smile, yet Johnny always seemed to play with one on his face. He genuinely loved playing the game, and I think the joy that he played with gave him an edge. As a guy who was never very big growing up, Johnny was an inspiration to me. He proved that it didn’t matter how physical you were, or how tall or strong you were. What mattered was how skilled you were, how able you were to avoid getting hit. He showed that doing something you love is achievable if you worked hard at it and wanted to do it badly enough. In an era where the American Dream is dying out, perhaps dead already, Johnny Hockey lived out his American Dream. Winning a gold medal for his country in the 2013 IIHF World Junior Championships was a proud and patriotic moment for him. It’s tragic that his dream and his life have been ripped away from him so young, ripped away from his brother too. His sister was scheduled to be getting married today, August 30, and now she’ll have two less siblings to celebrate with.

My perspective on drunk driving is biased through personal experience, sadly. I’ve been in a car with a clearly impaired driver on two occasions, both times I feared for my life and there were multiple occasions where my 12-year-old self had to grab the wheel to avoid veering off the road into ditches or trees, or both. It is a needless risk, especially in the day and age of Ubers and Lyfts that can be scheduled to pick up and drop off people wherever they please. Even when we know so much about the dangers of drunk driving, people still do it. People still don’t use designated drivers, people still can’t control themselves enough around alcohol to avoid getting sloshed in the first place. A friend of mine suffered serious injuries two years ago and lost his best friend as a result of a drunk truck driver veering off the road and slamming into them on the sidewalk. More needs to be done to avoid such tragedy. More mental health studies should be done to answer questions as to why someone drinks themselves away. What trauma have they experienced that forced them to that point? In my dad’s case, he broke his back and lost his job, then lost a good chunk of his savings trying to keep the family afloat while looking for another job. Drunk driving is an epidemic that kills far too many people, and it’s about time we not only put a stop to it but figure out why it happens in the first place. Two young men, among countless others, have died as a result of negligence and foolishness. How many more need to die before we do something about it?