The Gaudreau family didn\u2019t realize the impact attending the USA men\u2019s hockey team\u2019s last two games of the 2026 Olympics would have on them.<\/p>\n
They thanked USA Hockey on Saturday for bringing them to Milan and honoring Johnny Gaudreau, who along with brother Matthew was killed by an alleged drunk driver in August 2024 on the eve of their sister Katie\u2019s wedding.<\/p>\n
Gaudreau\u2019s parents, Jane and Guy, Johnny\u2019s widow, Meredith, and their two oldest kids, daughter Noa and son Johnny Jr., made the trip to watch Team USA\u2019s wins over Slovakia and Canada. The players brought Noa and Johnny Jr. on the ice for team photos after winning the gold medal.<\/p>\n
Johnny Gaudreau\u2019s wife, Meredith, holding son Johnny Jr. after Team USA\u2019s gold medal win on Feb. 22, 2026. James Lang-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Johnny Gaudreau\u2019s parents, Jane and Guy, at the Olympics. AP<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we were first invited to Milan for the Olympics, we said no<\/a>. It felt like more than we could handle,\u201d the Gaudreau family wrote Saturday in a statement on X<\/a>. \u201cBut we kept thinking about what John and Matty would say if they knew we turned it down. We knew the answer.\u2028John loved representing his country. From the time he was little, he dreamed of competing at the Olympics. In that final summer, he was working harder than ever, pushing himself with everything he had to earn a spot on that roster. He was going to be there.\u2028Sitting with that knowledge while watching these Games was not easy \u2014 but being present for them, surrounded by people who truly cared about John and Matty, made it something we will always treasure.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n \u201cEvery person we encountered took the time to ask about the boys \u2014 who they were, what they meant to us, the kind of people they were away from the ice.\u2028\u2028What struck us most was realizing that John and Matty\u2019s impact reaches so much further than we sometimes see in our own grief.\u2028\u2028They are carried by so many people \u2014 in locker rooms, in conversations, in quiet moments we will never even know about. That means everything to us.\u2028\u2028And then Team USA won gold. When Zach [Werenski], Auston [Matthews], and Matthew [Tkachuk] carried John\u2019s jersey around that ice, we were overwhelmed \u2014 they made sure he was there. And then to see Noa and Johnny \u2014 on Johnny\u2019s second birthday \u2014 carried out onto the ice to be part of that gold medal photo \u2014 there are no words for what that felt like.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n \u201cJohn and Matty should have been there, and in that moment, they were.\u2028\u2028Thank you to every member of that team for loving John & Matty \u2013 and for making sure they were part of something historic. And thank you to everyone at @NBCOlympics and @usahockey for your kindness, your generosity, and for bringing our family to Milan to witness it.\u2028\u2028You gave us a gift we didn\u2019t know we needed.<\/p>\n Auston Matthews (l.), Zach Werenski (c.) and Matthew Tkachuk (r.) carry Johnny Gaudreau\u2019s jersey after Team USA\u2019s gold-medal win over Canada on Feb. 22, 2026. Getty Images<\/p>\n Meredith and Johnny Gaudreau. Meredith Gaudreau\/Instagram<\/p>\n \u201cWith love and gratitude, The Gaudreau Family.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnny, a prolific NHL star with the Flames and Blue Jackets, was part of the USA team that won the World Junior Championships in 2013 and played in five senior-level world championships, which included winning bronze in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Gaudreau family didn\u2019t realize the impact attending the USA men\u2019s hockey team\u2019s last two games of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[32700,385,1082,99,40235,58926,211565],"class_list":{"0":"post-499315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-johnny-gaudreau","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-olympics","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-usa-hockey","13":"tag-winter-olympics","14":"tag-winter-olympics-2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}