COLUMBUS — Midway through a conversation with a pair of Calgary-based reporters, two scribes who covered each of his nine seasons with the Flames, Sean Monahan fishes into his pocket for his phone.
A proud-parent smile spreads across his face as he opens a photo snapped the previous day.
There’s his son Leo, only six months old. He is lying beside Johnny Gaudreau’s boy, Little Johnny. There is watermelon-shaped toy between them.
It’s the sort of snapshot, the sort of moment, the 30-year-old Monahan wishes he could share with his closest pal.
That was certainly the plan this summer, when he signed to join Gaudreau with the Columbus Blue Jackets. That was less than two months before both Johnny and his younger brother Matthew were killed in a senseless tragedy, struck by an alleged drunk driver as they rode bicycles along a rural road in their home state of New Jersey. Johnny had just turned 31.
“You lose your best friend, your teammate, it’s tough to comprehend,” Monahan said. “Ninety per cent of the time, it doesn’t feel real. When something happens in my life, I’d usually give John a FaceTime and he’d answer. I go through those situations a lot where you want to pick up the phone and give him a call or text or send him a picture or something, and then you realize. That’s when it hurts.
“I still haven’t, obviously, got over it. I don’t think I ever will. At some point, I think it will feel real. But as of today, it still doesn’t for me.”
For Monahan, there are constant reminders, a void that will never be filled.
His house is all of two doors down from where Johnny’s wife Meredith and children still live. He is there often to visit.
On his drive to the rink, Johnny is “basically all I think about.”
And in the home locker room at Nationwide Arena, he sits beside an empty stall. On game days, like when the Flames visit for Friday’s matinee, a No. 13 jersey will be hanging there.
“You guys got to see me and John first-hand, our relationship,” Monahan said in Thursday’s interview with those familiar faces from Calgary. “I mean, we stopped playing with each other for two years and we talked every day, went on vacation, went to visit each other. Just two donkeys who really enjoyed being with each other.
“You go through free agency and I talked to him every day, and it finally happened and it felt pretty surreal — we were going to be back together, I’m healthy again and we were excited to see what we can do. And he was super motivated. He was FaceTiming me and putting his phone up and I was watching him work out, and that was not something that would happen very often.
“So this was going to be a special year. And now, you’ve gotta carry on that legacy of him and what he’s meant to me in my career and obviously in my life.
“I think I play for him, his wife, his kids, his family. At the same time, you’re playing for yourself to get through a time like this and try to enjoy it as much as I can.”
Johnny and Mony, Calgary Flames franchise duo
The ultimate highlight clip from Gaudreau’s nine-season stint with the Flames, and there is certainly an abundance to choose from, is not a dazzling deke, a bar-down beauty or one of those he-must-have-eyes-in-the-back-of-his-head assists.
If you have time to watch only one replay, it should be the hallway hug.
Gaudreau had just scored the biggest goal of his career, a top-shelf snipe in overtime of Game 7 of a first-round playoff series against the Dallas Stars, and was headed down the tunnel after his first-star twirl, a wide smile on his face and the Saddledome crowd still in a state of frenzy.
Just a few steps from the ice surface, Monahan was waiting. Stuck spectating that spring as he recovered from hip surgery, he squeezed his longtime teammate so hard, it’s a surprise that no Skittles popped out.
“Honestly, it wasn’t about the goal,” Monahan reminisced. “It was more about his excitement. You watched him play the game. You know he loves the game. So he scored that goal and I’m thinking, ‘He gets to play more games, and I get to watch.’ I was hurt, but I was travelling with the team in playoffs and 90 per cent of the time, I was in his hotel room on the road-trips. We’d eat together, spend a lot of time together.
“So that was a good moment, for sure, and one that I definitely look back on quite a bit.”
In Calgary, it was always Johnny and Mony.
If you followed the Flames between 2014 and 2022, it felt like you seldom heard one name without the other. It was rare they weren’t on the ice together, the puck-whiz left-winger and sharpshooting centre.
Of the 212 goals that Monahan scored in the Flaming C, which remains the eighth-highest total in club lore, Gaudreau assisted on almost exactly half of ’em. A whole bunch of those were overtime winners.
They both left Cowtown in the same summer, not long after that hallway embrace. Johnny inked a long-term deal in Columbus and Monahan was traded to the Montreal Canadiens in a salary dump, his productivity having dipped due to injuries — including surgery on both hips — and former Flames general manager Brad Treliving looking to unload a contract so he could sign Nazem Kadri.
However, they remained so tight that Johnny’s wife, Meredith, singled out Monahan in her eulogy, pointing out her hubby bought a Goldendoodle because his best buddy had just done the same.
“Sean, John loved you so much,” Meredith said. “You had such an effortless and genuine bond that I was honoured to be a part of. As one of a kind as John was, I think you’re as close as it gets to being just like him.”
‘To see his career rejuvenated, it’s absolutely fantastic’
The hockey world was devastated in late August by the news that Johnny and Matthew, who teamed with his brother at Boston College and also played in the pro ranks, had been killed.
You immediately thought of their parents, Guy and Jane, and their sisters Kristen and Katie.
You immediately thought of their wives, both pregnant.
And you thought of Monahan, Johnny’s longtime linemate in Calgary and the other half of the most famous hug in Flames’ franchise history. He had, after all, just agreed to a five-year contract with the Blue Jackets as an unrestricted free agent. Nobody wondered why he chose Columbus, like so many had when Johnny signed in Ohio in 2022.
“He obviously went there to reconnect with Johnny and their family and to have their kids grow up together,” said Flames icon Lanny McDonald, now among the biggest fans of the team that he led to a Stanley Cup parade in 1989. “To see his career rejuvenated, it’s absolutely fantastic. I’m so happy for him. The pressure that I’m sure he was under after signing there and then having that happen, you wondered how he would respond. And he has knocked it out of the park, playing the way he has and helping Columbus through this whole tragedy.”
Agreed Flames GM Craig Conroy: “To see him get off to the start he has, you know somebody is riding shotgun with him, for sure.”
Johnny, without a doubt, would be impressed. And he’d be proud.
Heading into Friday’s matinee against the Flames, the first meeting between the two teams since Gaudreau’s death, Monahan is averaging just shy of a point-per-game this fall. He’s notched seven goals and 13 assists in 21 outings so far.
He is tops on his team in even-strength points (16), logs more ice time than any other Blue Jackets forward and is Dean Evason’s most trusted faceoff man, winning 52.2 per cent of his 429 draws.
He is showing what he was capable of before the hip and groin injuries. He is reminding why many figured he would eventually be captain in Calgary.
“He’s putting together a hell of a season,” said star defenceman Zach Werenski, a fan fave in Columbus. “He’s kind of the glue to our team, to be honest, with how he plays.”
“I remember back the first time I met him, we didn’t say any words. I’d talked to him on the phone, but it was just a hug and emotion,” added Evason, a former Flames forward — and a past Hitmen coach — who was hired in July as the Blue Jackets’ bench boss. “But he’s been a big part of our healing process because guys were watching how he reacted and how he handled himself and how he spoke and conducted himself in interviews and in the locker room.
“Just how he’s acted has been a real calming effect and leadership within our room.”
Monahan required no introduction inside the Blue Jackets room, and not simply because he arrived with nearly 800 games of NHL experience.
“I had heard a lot about Sean from Johnny over the years, all good things,” Werenski grinned. “That’s his best friend and if you’re John’s best friend, you’re probably a really good guy. That’s just kind of how it works.
“We still talk about John like he’s here, tell stories and stuff like that. So it’s definitely nice to have a group of guys that all had a relationship with John, and we’re all kind of in the same boat. And I feel like for Sean, as (crappy) as it is, it’s probably a great circumstance for him to come into — guys that knew John and were friends with John, can share stories about him. And for him, he just goes about his business. He comes here every day with a smile on his face. I’m sure he has tough days at home, you will have to ask him, but I think we can all learn from him and just how he handles himself and how he has handled this whole situation.”
Monahan seems to have entire NHL pulling for him
As competitive as they come, even in this business, Matthew Tkachuk is typically fuming after the Florida Panthers allow a goal.
This was an exception.
How could Tkachuk possibly have been ticked off after watching his former Flames teammate score for the Blue Jackets in their home opener, even if the defending champion Panthers happened to be the opposition on that emotional evening?
Monahan reacted by pointing immediately toward the No. 13 banner that had just been raised.
“I caught myself actually cheering for Mony after his goal and being so happy for him,” said Tkachuk, who missed that matchup due to illness, via text message.
While Tkachuk was understandably torn on that night, you get the feeling that absolutely everybody in the NHL is pulling for Monahan, a guy who has made a mark in most Canadian markets. He hails from the Toronto area. He’s skated for the Flames, Canadiens and Winnipeg Jets. He played his junior hockey with the OHL’s Ottawa 67’s.
“I’m so happy for Mony,” said Tkachuk, who spent six seasons with Monahan in Calgary. “He’s been playing amazing this year and it’s so well-earned. I think Johnny continues to watch over Mony and I know he wants to make Johnny proud by the way he’s playing.
“I saw a picture of their locker room and saw how they have a stall of Johnny right next to Mony, and I think it helps him to have him by his side every game.”
Echoed Flames winger Blake Coleman: “I can’t put words in his mouth, but I’d imagine that he feels like he’s playing a little bit for Johnny this year and carrying him with him throughout the season.
“And I’m not surprised that he’s off to a great start. He’s a great player and obviously a good teammate and friend, as well, so he’s an easy guy to root for. I know that it’s probably difficult for him to suit up and not have Johnny there with him, so I’m just super happy that he’s finding a lot of success.”
His former Canadiens teammates, who visited Columbus on Wednesday and notched a 4-3 overtime victory, had similar sentiments.
“You know, I wish he was still with us,” said Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki. “He’s a great teammate, a great friend. Obviously, what he has been through over the last few months is really tough and seeing how well he’s playing and seeming to be enjoying it here, it’s really cool.
“I don’t know how he’s doing it. Johnny was such a big person for him in his life. You know, that was one of the sadder days that I’ve been a part of in my life so I can’t even imagine what Sean is going through, and his family. But it’s great to see him doing well.”
They feel the same in Winnipeg, where Monahan spent a few months last winter as a before-the-deadline addition.
“He’s just a phenomenal person, a great guy, a true professional,” said Calgary-raised Josh Morrissey, a big-minute blue-liner for the Jets. “I’m just beyond happy for him. It’s a tough situation, with him signing in Columbus and his relationship and bond with Johnny. The whole situation is just a tragedy. For Mony as well, they were best friends, so I couldn’t imagine how difficult that has been for him.
“At the same time, he’s come out and had a fantastic start with that team. That whole team has done quite well, exceeding expectations given an unimaginable circumstance. I’m just really happy for him that he’s doing well.”
‘The hard thing for me is being around his kids’
He is doing well, and doing his friend proud.
“There’s a guy who didn’t change much,” Monahan said Thursday of Gaudreau. “He actually never changed as a person, except for obviously he had kids and became a great father.”
Indeed, he would have loved that photo from Wednesday, Leo and Little Johnny and the watermelon toy.
“The hard thing for me is being around his kids, because it’s something that we were really looking forward to,” Monahan said. “We were young kids in Calgary and we grew up and now our sons are, I think it’s 3½ months apart, so we have them together playing. That’s kind of what eats at me. We were really looking forward to being dads together and kind of that next step of life.”