Bob Nark made certain to go to Mass on Saturday night. That way, he would be free Sunday morning to turn on his television to NBC, to United States vs. Canada in Milan, to an unforgettable hockey game with an unforgettable finish, to a celebration that moved him and hundreds more people throughout South Jersey to tears.
Nark taught chemistry at Gloucester Catholic High School for 48 years, and one of those years, he happened to have Johnny Gaudreau in class. Before Gaudreau was a seven-time All-Star with the Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue Jackets, before he won a national championship at Boston College, while he was forging his legend as the star of stars within the South Jersey hockey community, he was to Nark just a conscientious student who would raise his hand to answer a question when no one would. “Besides being a great hockey player,” Nark said by phone Sunday afternoon, “he was a great kid. I loved him.”
So Nark made certain to watch the United States’ thrilling 2-1 victory but its emotional aftermath. Jack Hughes scored 101 seconds into overtime. The Americans won their first gold medal since the “Miracle on Ice” 46 years ago. And now three players — Auston Matthews, Zach Werenski, and Matthew Tkachuk — had lifted a Team USA jersey over their heads and were carrying it around the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena like a flag.
A Gaudreau jersey, with his No. 13 on the back, for the teammate who would have been, for the friend they had lost in August 2024, when an allegedly drunken driver struck and killed Johnny, 31, and his brother, Matt, 29 — on the night before their sister, Katie, was to be married — as they rode bicycles along County Road 551.
“I was so proud they remembered him for how great he was,” Nark said. “Today brought back a lot of memories, seeing them march his jersey around the ice.”
That entire postgame sequence — from the players’ gesture with the jersey to their scurrying into the stands to make sure Johnny’s two eldest children, 3-year-old Noa and 2-year-old Johnny Jr., joined them for the team picture — sent a quiver across a region that the Gaudreau family turned into a hockey hotbed years ago. Guy Gaudreau, Johnny’s father, had helped to form the program at Gloucester Catholic, forging it into a powerhouse before Matt eventually coached there, too. All the while, Johnny was the example that every youth coach could hold up to every youngster who was wobbling on skates but dreaming big dreams.
“Just an inspiration,” former Gloucester Catholic coach Tom Bunting once said. “As a parent, you could tell your players or your kid, ‘Hey, anything’s possible.’”
The days and weeks immediately after Johnny and Matt’s deaths had been nothing but a trauma for the entire community, a collective mourning that still hasn’t ended. “You never get past something like that,” said Tom Iacavone, Gloucester Catholic’s principal. “Johnny’s and Matt’s impact on us, it’ll never leave.” The challenge since has been to embrace what Ed Beckett, one of Iacavone’s predecessors as principal, called “the deeper Catholic tradition of remembrance, of the living memory of those who have gone before us.”
So there are a golf tournament and fundraisers. There are photos and hockey sweaters hanging on the walls inside Hollydell Ice Arena in Sewell, where the brothers played and coached. And on Sunday, in a city more than 4,000 miles away, across an ocean, there was a moment when Johnny Gaudreau’s jersey and spirit were there for the world to see, a moment that choked the breath of everyone who knew and loved him.
He never had the chance to compete for Team USA. These Olympics were the first since the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia, to include NHL players. But with his family in the arena for the gold-medal game, with the United States’ players clearly keeping him at the front of their minds and the bottom of their hearts, with so many joyous and tender phone calls and text messages traveling among those connected to Gloucester Catholic and South Jersey hockey, Johnny Gaudreau was as alive Sunday as he has ever been since that dark night on County Road 551. After the game, Tom Iacavone took a picture of his daughter, Nora, who is 7 years old. She was wearing a Team USA scarf with the No. 13 on it. He texted the photo to Katie Gaudreau. A great and unforgettable day to remember a great and unforgettable kid, gone too soon.
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