Epilepsy took Gagliardi off the ice, but not away from game he loves
Gagliardi, a master of stick taping, describes himself as a crazy, crazy New York Rangers fan. He watches them every game.
He traces his family lineage in hockey. Two older brothers, Paul and John, were captains at Hand-Madison. His uncle played at Trinity. One cousin played in college and another will, too.
“The game is pretty huge in my family,” Gagliardi said. “I played until the fourth grade when I had to quit contact sports.”
Matt Gagliardi loves a game he cannot play. He is an epileptic.
“I was in school and reading in a group,” he said. “I felt this twitching and shaking in my face and eye. The next thing I knew I was with the nurse and then in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”
He spent 10 days at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital in February 2015. Doctors worked to diagnose him. There were nearly 30 wires attached to his head. There were a series of MRIs. It was traumatic for a 9year-old boy.
Then there was the lingering disappointment of no more hockey, no more lacrosse. Watching his brothers and friends play. Yes, that hurt the worst.
Matt would be on medication for two years after that first seizure. It worked, but it also made him drowsy, fatigued. He was able to go off medication in the sixth grade and it worked out until he had a full-body seizure in the summer of 2021. He went back on medication and hasn’t had another seizure since.
“Knock on wood,” Matt said. Or maybe knock on laminated birch, maple, aspen and ash.
On Saturday, Gagliardi, a student manager with the Hand hockey team, was honMatt ored along with the other 12th graders at Senior Night before the game against Lyman Hall.
Said Hand coach Brian Gonsalves, “Here’s a kid whose brothers played in this program, watching them, and unfortunately he grew up with a condition that did not allow him to play hockey.
“He is driving now. He has become a helluva golfer. He has found his own way in the sporting world. Hockey is his passion and he loves taping sticks.”
Gonsalves said Gagliardi knows every stick on the team, what kind of tape job they want and virtually the entire roster entrusts him. He has his own little travel bag of magic.
On top of that, he does the
smaller thing like getting a skate sharpening stone if needed, stacking pucks for pre-game, passing out water bottles.
“He’s also a leader,” Gonsalves said. “At certain moments in the season, he has actually taken it upon himself to speak to the group and he is respected amongst them. That is really cool to witness as a coach.”
Matt said he isn’t as involved in the equipment as he was with Taft School when his cousin played there. He said he’d arrive three hours before the game — way too early — to set up everything.
“I was basically a psycho about it,” Matt said.
Covering the NHL for nearly two decades, I’ve watched players tape and prepare their sticks with all the love and care of handling an infant. It figures that many apply baby powder. All to get the perfect touch to make and receive passes and shoot the puck.
No creases. No bubbles. Players are persnickety. It has to be perfect. Taping sticks is an art form. Gagliardi is no neophyte. He has been taping since elementary school. There’s a story in the New Haven Register from December 2016 about Matt taping sticks to raise money for New Haven Children’s Toy Closet to buy presents for kids spending Christmas in the hospital.
“Taping sticks is one of my favorite things to do,” Gagliardi said. “I prefer taping toe to heel. Most guys go heel to toe. When you tape it heel to toe, the way the puck slides off the stick it actually gets caught in the ridges.”
He taped his brother John’s stick toe to heel for many years and John, whose Hand career overlapped two years with Matt, had a really good shot. Players agree they can see a bit of a difference. The entire exercise builds bonds in the locker room.
“I definitely feel like that,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll tape a stick of someone I don’t usually tape and he’ll score two goals or get a couple of points and I’ll go, “That’s all me. You’re welcome. Now, I’ve got to tape your stick again.’ I like to have fun with it.”
A slump, superstition, sometimes a player needs to change up. Whole blade. Half blade. Threequarter blade. Toe to heel. Heel to toe. White tape. Black tape. Wax. No wax. No problem. Matt is full service.
“My favorite is white tape with some puck marks on it,” he said. “But I also like the look of black tape with wax on it.”
Even now, his mom Tara Courtmanche said they’ll go to a college game and Matt will point out players whose sticks he taped in prep school, juniors or high school.
“As awful as the epilepsy journey was at first,” Tara said, “not knowing if it was a brain tumor causing the seizure, it was a roller coaster to come out of that. Matt and his brothers lived and breathed hockey. This stick taping thing gave Matt a chance to be involved and loved in the locker room.”
Sometimes you find passions and sometimes passions find you. Matt was still playing around with the idea of continuing baseball when he decided to try golf in the eighth grade.
“I refer to golf as the blessing in disguise,” Matt said. “If I hadn’t had epilepsy, I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved. I kind of thought it was a dumb sport and only losers played golf when I was younger. I love it so much now. I can’t imagine my life without it.”
He started playing at Allen Memorial in New Haven. A couple of years ago, he joined Madison Country Club as a junior member.
Gagliardi is not the kind of guy who does things halfway. He talks about how he used to ride his bike a mile every day to the course with his bag of clubs slung over his back to play for hours and hours. He was hooked.
Matt may have been a late starter, but there he was as a sophomore shooting 76 to help lead Hand to a Division II state title.
“That team was loaded (with Matt Doyle, Conner Quinn, Reece Scott),” Gagliardi said. “I’d love to win another state championship.”
Gagliardi is down to a 1.6 handicap. This warm winter? Of course, he has been on the course. He describes himself as a big Jordan Spieth fan. He has convinced John, who is playing lacrosse at Bentley, and Paul, who lives in Boston after graduating from Syracuse, to be Spieth guys, too.
“Golf was the first thing the three boys could do together,” Courtmanche said. “As a mom, that makes my heart happy. Matt couldn’t do a lot of things they were involved with, so it’s kind of cool that he is the best at it.”
In the fall, he will attend Alvernia University in Reading, Pa. He will play Division 3 golf there. After the school’s coach Jon King reached out to him, Matt visited in August along with his grandfather.
“I fell in love with the school and the golf course,” he said. “I was hyping the school up so much my mom had to see it for herself, so we went in fall. I’m really excited for it.”
But first there are some sticks to tape.
“I’m really close with all the kids on the team,” he said. “They’ve put a lot into the program from when they weren’t playing much their freshman year and worked their way up. It’s really paid off. I’m really happy for them.”