Twenty-five years ago, when building his family’s home in Oldmans Township, N.J., Guy Gaudreau crafted the flooring by hand. He drove to Vermont and cut down the white ash trees from his father’s wood lot. He oversaw the kiln-drying of the logs, the sawing of the planks, the molding of the panels — every step of the process.

The result is well-polished and smooth, except for a single spot.

Tucked away in the kitchen, the spot once contained a knot, which popped free, leaving behind a hole the size of a quarter. Naturally it became a source of material for Guy’s two sons, John and Matty, who enjoyed trying to disrupt his usual even keel. The brothers would jokingly question their dad’s choice of wood, talking about how it was cheap, until a riled-up Guy fired back, defending his work.

“That’s the way the boys were,” Guy says, chuckling.

Full of humor. Full of life.

On Aug. 29, 2024, the eve of their younger sister Katie’s scheduled wedding, John and Matty were struck and killed by an alleged drunk driver while riding bicycles near their childhood home. John, a star winger for the Columbus Blue Jackets known to many NHL fans as “Johnny Hockey,” was 31. Matty, who reached the second-tier AHL as a player before recently pivoting to coaching at the youth level, was 29.

In the year since, the Gaudreau family has found flickers of light amid the darkness. NHL teams have invited Guy, a retired coach and community rink manager, to join them on the ice for practices, and countless letters from around the world — Canada to Sweden, Germany to Russia — have filled the parents’ mailbox. Meredith Gaudreau welcomed her and John’s third child in April, four months after Madeline Gaudreau gave birth to her and Matty’s first.

Through it all, Guy has been proud of his family’s efforts to keep the boys’ memories alive. Of course, he adds, “I’d rather have them back.”

Voice just above a whisper, he continues, reminding himself of the cruel reality.

“I can’t have them back.”

No guide exists for processing grief of this magnitude. Each member of the Gaudreau family shares the same two losses, but their experiences are far from uniform. Guy sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and wanders through the house, wondering how this bad dream came to be. Older sister Kristen posts pictures of the brothers to her Instagram story on a near-daily basis. When Katie traveled to Italy for her delayed honeymoon last month, she felt a sting every time she saw an advertisement for the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics. John had so badly wanted to play at the tournament.

“Some days you have an OK day, and then halfway through the day something will hit you,” says their mother, Jane Gaudreau. “Then some days you wake up and it just feels like someone is sitting on your chest.”

Jane has learned to prepare herself for the predictably hard moments, like the boys’ birthdays and Mother’s Day. But others catch her by surprise. At her job, writing Matty’s old jersey number, 21, on a piece of paper. At a family friend’s wedding, watching the mother-son dance.

Or at home one day in March. As Jane walked through the kitchen, her foot tripped on the divot in the white ash floor.

It didn’t hurt at first. But then she looked down, saw the hole and started to sob.

Johnny and Matthew with their parents on a family vacation (Courtesy of Katie Gaudreau)

With a guest list topping 200, Katie’s wedding was scheduled for Aug. 30, 2024, in the Philadelphia area. The day before, John and Matty went golfing with their fellow groomsmen, then returned with everyone to Guy and Jane’s home. The Gaudreau brothers hung out in the hot tub by the backyard pool, laughing into the evening.

Sometime around 8 p.m., they hopped on a pair of bikes and rode off to see a friend.

Meredith last saw John that morning, before he left for golf, when he gave goodbye kisses to her and their daughter, Noa, and son, John Jr. He had packed the car “in perfect Tetris fashion,” she later wrote in an article for the Players’ Tribune, filling it up for John Jr.’s christening, Katie’s wedding, and their eventual return to Columbus for the 2024-25 NHL season. It was the four-year anniversary of the day he asked Meredith to marry him.

Meredith was in her first trimester of pregnancy. Madeline was further along, at 23 weeks. Her last interaction with Matty came that evening, while she was at a Philadelphia hotel where visitors were staying for the wedding. They texted about their future baby’s name, which they had already decided.

At approximately 8:19 p.m., according to court documents, John and Matty were cycling along the narrow shoulder of Pennsville Auburn Road, around two miles from the family home, when an SUV moved to the center of the two-lane road to pass. From behind, a Jeep Grand Cherokee then sped up to the right of the SUV, fatally striking the brothers from behind. The driver, who is facing charges of aggravated vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter, among others, posted a blood alcohol level of 0.087, above the legal limit of 0.08.

In the aftermath, the family converged on Guy and Jane’s house. Guy dropped to the floor and bawled. Meredith was unable to stand up, she wrote in the Players’ Tribune, at once “awake and having nightmares.” It was all too much for Madeline, who caught a ride from a friend to her and Matty’s home some 10 minutes away. She went to bed by herself, hoping to wake up and learn it had just been a terribly vivid pregnancy dream.

Both Gaudreau parents were admitted into a local hospital that night: Guy out of concern for elevated heart rate and blood pressure, and Jane because she had entered what family described as a catatonic-like state at the house upon hearing the news, incapable of responding, no matter how loud Katie screamed her name.

Jane and Guy each stayed two nights at the hospital. They were put in separate rooms, but the nursing staff allowed Jane to climb into Guy’s bed and sleep there. There was no cure for what they were feeling, but at least they weren’t alone.

Less than a week later, Meredith and Madeline visited a funeral home to plan a joint memorial service for their late husbands. At one point that day, the two wives were in a room with Lewis Gross, John and Matty’s agent. When the funeral director asked where Meredith and Madeline wanted flowers to be sent, the group began tossing around the idea of accepting donations to a charity.

“Maybe we should start a foundation in the boys’ name,” Gross suggested.

In setting up the John and Matthew Gaudreau Foundation, the wives focused on areas of passion for its namesakes. In a public letter launching the foundation in March, Meredith and Madeline, who serve as co-presidents, expressed a desire to “expand youth ice hockey opportunities, help hockey families facing tragedies, as well as help families that are unfortunately also affected by drunk driving, like ours.”

Now a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit, the foundation maintains an online store selling hoodies and hats — products the brothers would have worn. The wives are planning their first event, likely a golf outing. Someday, Madeline says, they hope to pass the reins on to the next generation of Gaudreaus.

“A lot of times when Matt and John are spoken about, it’s with a lot of sadness and heaviness, and rightfully so,” Madeline says. “But I want to change the narrative, and rather than talking about the tragic way we lost them and how they should be here, talking about the foundation and what we’re doing with it is what I’m trying to do.”

The foundation has received ample support from the hockey community. Meredith was amazed to learn that three NHL players even asked for donations to it in lieu of gifts at their respective summer weddings: Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski, who also had Noa Gaudreau serve as flower girl, and the Florida Panthers’ Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett, both of whom played with John on the Calgary Flames, his first NHL team.

A view of the helmet sticker with the brothers’ numbers, worn at a game played in their honor. (Len Redkoles / Getty Images)

“I look at it as, ‘I have an opportunity to do a lot of good and help people who need help,’” Meredith says. “That’s what feels good to me.”

Guy and Jane, meanwhile, pursued a separate charitable effort in putting on the Gaudreau Family 5K, which raised money for an adaptive playground at Archbishop Damiano School, a school for students with special needs where both Jane and Kristen work. A family friend came up with the idea, and a group of nearly 20 handled the organizing. Neither parent was ready for such a large undertaking so soon after losing John and Matty.

The race took place in Sewell, New Jersey, on the last day of May. Less than 24 hours before, Jane saw that the weather forecast included rain. She went upstairs to the brothers’ childhood room. Aside from trading the two twin beds for an adult-sized one, the family has kept it virtually unchanged over the years. The dresser is still full of the boys’ sweats, swimsuits and other clothes they used when visiting home.

Jane plopped onto the bed. She stared up at the sports-themed wallpaper bordering the ceiling.

“Hey guys, I know I haven’t heard from you or you haven’t given me any signs,” she said. “But maybe you could just do me this one favor.”

The rain passed by the time of the race.

Madeline always liked the idea of having tattoos, but wanted to be certain she would never regret her choice before getting one. Clarity has come over the past year. She now has six, including a “J 13” for John and his jersey number on her left arm, Matty’s name below her ring finger, his and their child’s initials on her right wrist, and a particularly special one on her left abdomen.

“Love, Your Husband,” it reads.

Madeline took those words from a card Matty once gave her. The tattoo is in his handwriting. Others came before it, but this was the most emotionally difficult: Before the process began, the artist had mixed the ink with Matty’s ashes.

Both Meredith and Madeline have now gotten multiple tattoos with their husbands’ cremated remains, all done by the same New Jersey-based artist. Now, the wives are always carrying John and Matty with them.

They aren’t alone. Guy, Jane, Kristen and Katie all wear bracelets with the brothers’ jersey numbers on them. At Katie’s rescheduled wedding in July, her bouquet featured those same numbers: 13 small roses for John and 21 large ones for Matty.

“I tried really hard to just keep saying their name,” she says.

There are public tributes everywhere, too. At Hollydell Ice Arena, the rink where Guy worked as hockey director until 2020 and taught the brothers to skate, an ice sheet for younger players now bears a new name: the Gaudreau Rink. At Gloucester Catholic, where John and Matty played high school hockey before leaving for the junior level in the USHL, a banner honoring them stands outside the gym across from a trophy case of photos, as well as a No. 13 Flames jersey autographed by John.

Multiple memorials have sprung up on the side of Pennsville Auburn Road. A cross with the boys’ names rises from the ground, surrounded by artificial flowers. Two bikes, both painted white, are chained to a post, their wheels intertwined with weeds. It’s part of a lush country area, surrounded by soybean fields, farming equipment and big skies.

A memorial cross for the Gaudreau brothers at the site of the crash (Peter Baugh / The Athletic)

Prior to the crash, Guy would frequently jog and bike down that stretch; now he refuses to go by it and isn’t sure he ever will again. Madeline won’t drive past the site either, unless absolutely necessary. She knows the memorials are well-intentioned. But to her, the white bikes represent how the brothers died — not how they lived.

For this reason, whenever Katie passes it while leaving her nearby house, the youngest Gaudreau sibling instead tries to imagine how happy her brothers must have been before the crash.

“They were the two closest people I’ve ever met in my life,” she says. “I try to think about how they were probably joking with each other and laughing and being together.”

The brothers are everywhere at Guy and Jane’s house. The Hobey Baker Trophy that John won as college hockey’s top player with Boston College in 2013-14 sits atop the dining room table. Matty’s locker tag from a run with BC to the NCAA Frozen Four leans against a cabinet. A digital frame cycles through photos of the brothers on a kitchen counter, right above the quarter-sized hole in the floor.

Nearby, at the top of the refrigerator, a magnet of John and Matty’s jersey numbers keeps a picture in place. It was taken one long-ago Halloween, before Katie was born. John and Matty are both toddlers in it, dressed as clowns. Jane is holding Matty, and Kristen carries John, a decade his senior. White face paint covers the boys’ faces, as Guy stands between them wearing a pirate’s outfit complete with an eyepatch.

Staring at her brothers on a recent summer day, Kristen sees their children.

“Look at that face,” she says, gesturing to little John and then to a picture of Noa further down on the fridge. “It’s the same face.”

Like Noa, Carter Michael Gaudreau takes after his dad: He was born at 8 pounds, 3 ounces and 20 1/2 inches — the exact same measurements as John. With big cheeks and a round face, middle child John Jr. follows John more in personality than looks — observant and a bit on the quiet side. Now 2, Noa is the only one old enough to have memories of her dad but doesn’t quite understand what happened.

Meredith Gaudreau with Noa and Johnny Jr. (Kirk Irwin / Getty Images)

“I tell her you’re in heaven and that we can look at photos and videos,” Meredith wrote in her Players’ Tribune article, formatted as a letter to John. “It crushes me every time.”

Matty used to tell his wife he was born to be a dad. Now his son, Tripp Matthew Gaudreau, resembles him in his mouth and chin, Madeline says. Guy adds that Tripp is lanky — just like Guy’s dad and just like Matty. His favorite toy is a hockey stick. Soon, as hard as she knows it will be, Madeline will bring him to a rink. Matty was so looking forward to that.

To Madeline and Meredith, the children offer purpose. After Tripp’s birth in December, despite the cold temperature outside, Madeline noticed a blue butterfly by her hospital window. It stayed there until she was discharged. When she came home with Tripp, another blue butterfly greeted her at the door.

But life away from those sources of light is more difficult.

“I feel like I have two personalities now,” Madeline says. “I have one when I’m with Tripp and I’m present and I feel happy.

“Then the other part, when he goes to bed, I just feel kind of like a shell of a human.”

For Madeline, it’s important to experience the sadness, often alone. Sometimes she walks outside and talks to Matty. Others she spends in silence, feeling his presence. In the days after the crash, someone gifted her a journal titled “Letters to my husband.” She keeps it next to her bed and writes in it every night.

“Who I was is not anymore,” she says. “I haven’t quite figured out where to go from that.”

On Friday, Meredith and Madeline plan to spend the anniversary of John and Matty’s deaths together, with their children, on the Jersey Shore. The fact that it’s the one-year mark, Madeline says, holds no significance to her. Every day without her Matty is painful. She doesn’t want to give any added power to this one.

Through the pain, the wives are creating happy memories. Meredith brought Noa and John Jr. to pregame ceremonies honoring John in Columbus and Calgary last season. In June, when Meredith went to Los Angeles and announced the Blue Jackets’ first-round pick in the NHL Draft, Noa watched on TV, clapping her hands and grinning.

“Go, Mommy, go!” she chanted.

On her first Mother’s Day with Tripp, Madeline knew Matty would want her to do something for herself. Instead, she felt better doing something for him. Taking care of their two-acre property used to always fall to Matty, who never minded the yard work. Guy and Jane had even given him a riding mower as a housewarming gift.

After Matty’s death, a neighbor took care of the landscaping. But that day, Madeline felt the urge to do it herself. She looked up a YouTube tutorial on using the mower, put on a pair of Matty’s brown boots, climbed into the seat and turned the key.

In the year since the loss of his sons, Guy isn’t sure that the grief has gotten easier to manage. He knows he’s not as fun as he used to be, and he worries that friends only see him out of pity. For a time, he struggled to talk about John and Matty’s accomplishments or look at pictures of them without crying or feeling anger at all his family has lost.

“I start getting jealous of other people that have their kids, and I don’t have mine,” he says. “Not that I want anything bad to happen to anyone. It just makes me feel like I got (robbed).”

The sleepless nights haven’t gone away, either. Sometimes, drifting through the house, he turns on the TV for a distraction. Or he calls his brother Eddy and cries through the phone. Recently, though, he believes he’s started turning a corner in at least one regard: Reminiscing about his late sons is easier.

Guy Gaudreau with grandson Johnny Jr. walks toward center ice for a pregame ceremonial puck drop in honor of Matthew and Johnny. (Len Redkoles / Getty Images)

Standing in the kitchen, Guy smiles as he recounts John’s first NHL goal, scored in his Flames debut wearing a No. 53 jersey now kept in the dining room. He raves about Matty’s growth at Boston College, developing from a freshman who barely played to the team’s leading scorer as a senior. He laughs about preparing steaks, cheese omelets and milkshakes for the boys’ breakfasts, trying to help them add weight to their skinny frames.

“Good kids,” he says. “Good boys. It’s hard to get up every day without ’em.”

After taking September off from work, Jane returned in October to her job as a finance associate at Archbishop Damiano. The job is part-remote, and she carpools with Kristen on the days she goes in. Jane doesn’t like driving alone. The quiet makes her think of John and Matty, and if she turns on the radio, sad songs do the same.

The stream of letters arriving at the house helps. In one, a mother wrote about how Matty, while playing for the USHL’s Omaha Lancers as a teenager, took her son, a nervous newcomer to the team, under his wing. In another, the author wished that Jane would give talks on how to keep a family close. Katie thinks she should write a book.

“We might not have had as much time as we wanted, but the time we had was better than a lot of people have with their families in an entire lifetime,” Jane says. “And I would rather have that and have that closeness and be together than not have that.”

Though retired, Guy stays busy. He runs, mows the grass, cleans the backyard pool and takes trips to see his mom in Vermont, where he taps trees to make syrup. In addition to serving as a guest coach at practices with the Blue Jackets, Flames, Philadelphia Flyers and Vegas Golden Knights, Guy took the ice with Team USA at February’s 4 Nations Face-Off, where he learned that general manager Bill Guerin had originally pencilled John in for the national team at the upcoming Olympics.

But all Guy could really do when on the ice with the NHLers was push pucks around and chitchat. At that point, the former coach wasn’t mentally ready to run drills again.

The pain lessens when he’s with his grandkids, who call him Pop-Pop. He notices it when leading Kristen’s 10-year-old daughter Kamryn through pushups and other basic exercises in the living room — as he did with John and Matty and as he will likely do someday with their kids. He notices it on days when he babysits Tripp and hopes that the boy inherits Matty’s athletic prowess.

“When I’m holding him, I don’t have such a big hole in my heart,” he says.

Before their deaths, John and Matty told Guy that they wanted him to come out of retirement to teach their kids hockey. Guy hopes he can find the strength to do that and prays that all four of John and Matty’s kids want to play the sport that their fathers loved.

A young Matthew and Johnny pose with their father. (Courtesy of Katie Gaudreau)

This summer, he helped a friend coach a two-week camp in Pennsauken, N.J., a 30-mile drive from the Gaudreau family house. He spent seven hours a day on the ice with children ages 6 to 12, split into two sessions each day, leading drills and power skating sessions and scrimmages. His brain, he says, needed to start working again.

Guy describes himself as a demanding coach, unafraid to yell. This style didn’t fully come out at the camp, but he “started feeling a little bit like my old self,” he says. Watching the kids improve, he continues, “I kind of felt like I accomplished something.”

Getting up at 6:45 a.m. every morning proved a struggle, and Guy returned home exhausted at each day’s end. But he enjoyed the experience. He slept better those nights.

(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic, with photos by Richard T. Gagnon / Getty Images, and courtesy of Katie Gaudrea)