“You don’t want to believe this, you’re scared, you’re terrified of the news. These things should never happen, especially to people like that.”
This is how Montreal Canadiens forward Cole Caufield felt on the morning of August 30, when he learned that his friend Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew had lost their lives the day before in a terrible accident.
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“That his family had to go through all that, it’s tragic,” he said during a recent interview with Renaud Lavoie. “I don’t have the words to describe how I felt.”
“I didn’t know what to do or how to respond,” he added. “Nothing can replace a loss like these two people. We feel helpless, we want to be there for them.”
Then, Caufield had a sort of epiphany.
“It occurred to me, one day, to pay homage to a guy like that, to change my number [pour le 13, que Gaudreau portait]. I had worn it in the past because of him.”
“I wasn’t sure how it worked, so I talked to Kent about it [Hughes] a Jeff [Gorton]“, he said. “They talked to the league about it and they came back to me saying it could work if that’s really what I want to do. For me, there was no doubt.”
Since then, Caufield feels that his friend accompanies him on the ice.
“I want to pay tribute to him for the rest of my life,” he said.
“Every time I jump on the ice, I feel a part of him is with me.”
Watch the full interview in the main video.
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