GOING FOR THE GOLD
Ex-Ranger and Long Island product Gilroy chasing his Olympic dream in South Korea
Eight Gilroy children wander the globe on this winter night. Noreen is in law school, Kevin works in finance, Frank runs a CrossFit and Michael is a college hockey player. Kellie is finishing up nursing school, and Shannon studies physical therapy. Caitlin, the youngest, is a senior at Mepham High. Three are in the family’s house on Rosemont Street in North Bellmore at the moment. The clan’s second oldest, Matt, is 33 and fresh off a flight from Helsinki, where he plays defenseman for Jokerit in the Kontinental Hockey League. In 10 hours, he will board a flight to Florida, at 8 a.m., to meet up with fellow members of the U.S. Olympic team for workouts. Preparations are being made for his departure to PyeongChang, for the Winter Games. His mother, Peggy Ann, and father, Frank Jr., sit at the kitchen table and talk; pizza slices are passed. There’s a wool hat on Matt’s head. A few days’ growth covers his face. When he bites, he reveals a gap where he is missing a tooth on the left side of his mouth.
“A stick to the face,” he says. “Long time ago.”
Gilroy grins. He reflects on the game’s toll on his body. The most grisly tale relates to a toe. It was during his time in the Eastern Junior Hockey League, with the Walpole (Mass.) Stars. He was running sprints back and forth on a mat in a jujitsu gym when he made a cut to change direction. Gilroy looked down at his feet. The big toe on his left foot was hanging off. It dislocated; the bone broke through the skin.
“Blood squirting everywhere,” he says. “I just leaned down, popped it back into place and the blood sort of stopped.”
Blood started pooling. His toe popped off, and he had to be rushed to the emergency room at Long Beach Hospital to have it reattached. His father interjects.
“The real kick to the story is he calls his mother, and says, ‘Mom, I am at the emergency room,’” Frank Jr. says. “She says, ‘Get out of here.’ He says, ‘My toe fell off.’ She says, ‘Whatever,’ hangs up, and calls me. She says, ‘Matt just called me from the emergency room. I think he’s messing with me, but do you mind calling him to see if it’s real? Because he says his toe fell off.’ I call him, call her back and say, ‘Peggy, you gotta get to the hospital. His toe fell off!’”
There is a rich oral history that the family maintains. Matt is much more mellow than he was as a child, when he chased away saxophone teachers because of his restlessness. He burned energy on lacrosse fields
and around hockey rinks, in schoolyards at St. Barnabas and on local asphalt, where he played stickball with a rotating cast of family members and friends. Frank Jr., a 6-foot6 Queens product, played basketball at St. John’s for Lou Carnesecca and was drafted by the 76ers. His kids could play whatever sport they wanted as long as they got out of the house. When Matt played at Boston University, his father didn’t know what The Beanpot, the annual tournament that is held on the first two Mondays of February, meant.
“I thought it was a bar,” Frank Jr. says. “I didn’t know what the hell a Beanpot was. I thought we were gonna go to a chili place.”
Matt made the most of his mettle tests. At St. Mary’s High in Manhasset, he picked up four state titles in hockey. He walked on at Boston University, worked his way into the lineup, won the Hobey Baker Award as the nation’s best collegiate player, lifted three Beanpots and walked off the ice with a national championship trophy. His is the story of a late bloomer from Long Island. He punched the clock for 225 appearances in NHL games and transitioned to the KHL, first with three seasons in Russia and now Finland. He has worn the No. 97 stitched into his game sweaters in honor of his late brother Timmy, 13 months his junior and now dead 24 years after falling off his bicycle en route to a kickball game on a nearby street, at each stop. Timmy suffered a gash to his head, had a seizure and died a few days later. He had worn 97 on a youth team. Matt was No. 98. They were homages to Wayne Gretzky, The Great One, No. 99. Matt vowed to carry Timmy with him on the ice.
“I know he’s watching,” Matt says. “It’s going to be special when I go into the locker room for the first time. Normally, what I do before every game is look at my number, and just remember where I come from, where I am going. To see that number on the red, white and blue jersey is going to a pretty surreal feeling.”
The expatriate is ready to reemerge on American radars with his Olympic role. The NHL declined to allow its players to perform for the first time since the 1994 Games, and Matt welcomed the invite. Frank Jr.’s father shipped out to Korea for the war when he was 18. He came back a paraplegic. The family considers the odds that Matt would fly out, at 33, to represent the U.S. The team’s roster is on the refrigerator in the kitchen, like a little league list under the family’s calendar. Matt is moving quickly now. He cuts the sleeves off a shirt, and packs clothes for Florida and then South Korea. He eyes his cell phone to check what time it is back in Finland.
“Helsinki time right now is 4 a.m.,” he says.
“Oof,” his mother says. “That’s nasty.”
The Long Island wing of the Boston University Hockey Hall of Fame is located in the basement of the Gilroy house. Matt walks down the steps, where his on-ice accomplishments are frozen in frames. There are sticks, gloves, helmets, ticket stubs and championship banners. On a wall by the air hockey table is a banner from the 2009 Frozen Four that his Terriers won. It reads: “Champions Play Here.”
“I remember I had to wear figure skates when I showed up to the rink first as a kid,” Matt says. “Mom wouldn’t buy me hockey skates until I learned how to skate. Tough thing when you show up to the rink looking to play hockey and mom throws them on. After that, I think it worked out. I learned my edges pretty well.”
His equipment required adjustments, too, back then. For his first clinic, Matt wore a protective cup and shin guards on the outside of his sweatpants. “Whoops,” Matt says. “So I went back to the sporting goods store and the guy gave me a check list,” Peggy Ann says. “That’s what I followed until I got it down. I wasn’t familiar with it.”
His father’s edict was simple: “Don’t just sit there. Do something.” Matt abided by the rules, and made his way around the rink circuit, skating at Newbridge Road, Cantiague Park, The Rinx in Hauppauge and Iceland in New Hyde Park. Every summer day, from 13 years old and on, he was at The Rinx. Peggy Ann dropped him off at 8 a.m. and picked him up at 5 p.m. He could skate at any clinic, any time. Despite the success at St. Mary’s, his body failed to keep pace with his peers. He remained 5-foot-7, 120 pounds as a senior in high school. No Division I scholarship offers came. He joined the juniors in Walpole, Mass. No scholarship came after the first season there, either. He was aging out of juniors when he visited the University of Maine. He thought he might get an offer, but left campus without anything in writing. BU assistant coach Mike Bavis called Matt while the Gilroys were driving back from Maine. Bavis had seen Matt’s final juniors game, and mentioned that BU was loaded at forward, which was Gilroy’s position. BU had a practice spot open for an eighth defenseman. Two days later, father and son button hooked back north to Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.
“I told him, ‘I don’t think it’s a real good idea, Matt, but if you want to come, I guarantee you that we’ll let you practice all year as a defenseman to give us bodies out there,’” says Jack Parker, then the legendary Boston University coach, “‘and then I’ll move you up the next year to try you out.’ He said, ‘I’ll take it.’” Gilroy expressed regret on the car ride back to New York. He wondered what he had done. He sat the first three games, but Parker offered him ice time in the fourth. It was an exhibition against Team USA’s Under-18 team. Gilroy, who was 21 years old as a freshman, proved to be the best defenseman on the ice. He played in 36 of the final 37 contests. Still, no scholarship money came until his junior season. By the end of that year, Gilroy, an offensive defenseman capable of getting back in coverage, drew free-agent offers from 23 NHL teams. Parker figured Gilroy would sign a contract and depart. Parker advised him to leave school for the NHL, and gave away Gilroy’s scholarship. Gilroy stayed and paid tuition as a senior, though. He finished his college career with 146 consecutive games played, and joined former Terrier Chris Drury as the only other BU player to take home the Hobey.
“I don’t think you develop that type of determination. I would think it is innate,” Parker says. “There wasn’t anybody breaking down
the door for him, and yet he had this idea, knew he had this ability. He thought he could reach for the highest level and didn’t settle. It’s the genes. I had nothing to do with it. I know that.” There are memories of Hockey East’s hostile environs that remain with Matt. The most profane traces back to Orono, Maine, where Gilroy chased a puck into the corner at Alfond Arena against the University of Maine Black Bears. He smiles. “The atmosphere,” he says, “fans on top of you, throwing stuff down.” “Grandmothers cursing their brain out!” Peggy Ann says. “So, I’m on the boards one time and some grandmother is banging on it and shouts, ‘F--you!’” Matt says. “Shows how rabid they are. It’s a lot of fun.” He recorded three assists in one contest against Maine. As a senior, he led all conference defensemen in scoring with 37 points (8 goals; 29 assists). In Parker’s 800th career victory, he tallied a goal and an assist. He set up Nick Bonino’s game-tying goal to force overtime in the NCAA Championship win. There are photos of dog piles on the basement wall, and Parker remains close with Gilroy, whose brother, Kevin, followed his path to wear the red and white, and now works at State Street (Corp.) in Boston. Matt will skate alongside three Terriers, including Johnny McCarthy, his BU roommate, in the Olympics. This foursome will make it 27 former Parker players to play for the U.S. Olympic program. Parker laughs about the four on the same team. “It’s happened once before,” he says. That was in the 1980 Games, when the Americans beat the Soviet Union and claimed the gold at Lake Placid. Four Terriers — captain Mike Eruzione, Dave Silk, Jack O’Callahan and Jim Craig — suited up for the U.S. Eruzione sent a message to the current team after it was selected. It was forwarded to the players’ text group chat.
“It was pretty cool to see that coming through your phone,” Gilroy says. “I was playing juniors when ‘Miracle’ came out. Saw it at Bellmore Playhouse.”
“I’m just happy to see the sunlight,” Matt says. “I haven’t seen it in a while. Up there in Finland, it doesn’t come out much.”
This is his first time stateside since he left for Finland on July 16. He is on a one-year contract worth seven figures. His general manager is Jari Kurri, the former right winger who won five Stanley Cups as a player in the NHL. The KHL is on break, and Jokerit is in third place in the Western Conference. The Finns are hockey fanatics, and Gilroy feels appreciated by the locals. The NHL is more structured, but Gilroy benefits from the helter-skelter action in Helsinki. In 54 games, he has scored 7 goals and collected 20 assists. One teammate, Brian O’Neill, was on the same flight home to John F. Kennedy Airport as Gilroy. O’Neill is a former Yale Bulldog and New Jersey Devil who hails from Yardley, Pa., and will also be on the U.S. Olympic squad. Matt notes that the wider ice of the KHL is better for his approach to the game. Still, there are hurdles abroad. For one, he is not a linguist.
“Finnish? I have no chance. No chance,” he says. “To be honest, it is embarrassing when you travel through Europe and Russia. I can only speak English, one language. Embarrassing. These guys speak three, four languages. Finnish guys speak English, Finnish, Swedish. They understand the Danish and the Norwegians. It is amazing. I sit there and need everything in English. Who’s the idiot, right?”
To track his career, follow the bouncing puck. He was not drafted out of college, and chose to come home to the Rangers as a free agent with a two-year contract a week after winning the NCAA title. When that deal ended, he moved on to Tampa Bay. Six months later, he was traded to Ottawa. The next fall, with the NHL lockout in progress, he joined the Connecticut Whale of the AHL. The lockout ended, and Gilroy rejoined the Rangers. The Florida Panthers inked Gilroy as a free agent the next summer. Gilroy managed 16 appearances for a struggling team before being assigned to the San Antonio Rampage of the AHL. He has been in the European hockey orbit ever since, first with the Russian club Atlant Moscow Oblast of the KHL in 2014 and then with Spartak Moscow. He has made two All Star teams in his travels. Last year, he partook in a gag at a KHL All-Star skills event. When Gilroy approached goaltender Igor Bobkov on a penalty shot, Gilroy slowed up by the crease, took his right glove off and slipped $100 to Bobkov. Gilroy then slapped the puck in the net. It was billed as a bribe, the fans applauded and the video went viral.
“I could understand enough Russian to know I wasn’t getting f--ed with,” he says. “I could understand if something was going to go down. Living in Moscow, there was so much English I didn’t need to learn. Anytime I went to a restaurant I knew somebody was going to be able to order. I didn’t go to a smaller town out east, farther into Russia that English was harder to find.”
He notes that there are tougher destinations, like Yugra, in Russia.
“It is minus-40 out and 200 people at the game, it’s pretty depressing,” he says. “The rink is big, but no one really wants to go outside there. The meat only gets delivered one day a week: Tuesdays. If you’re not there at Tuesday at like 10 o clock, you don’t get meat for the week.”
One herb has been cut out of his diet permanently.
“If I smell dill, I am done,” he says. “In Russia, they put it everywhere. If it’s a lot of dill, I can’t eat.”
He has wielded his stick in China, Kazakhstan, Croatia, Latvia and Slovakia. Some road trips include 12-hour flights across eight time zones. Off the ice, he has visited Paris and London with his wife, Jenny Taft, who is a broadcaster with Fox Sports. She knows his game well. Her father, John, played in the NHL, as well as on the U.S. Olympic team in 1976. She played in high school. Matt met her at BU, where she played lacrosse, first at study hall and then at “Who’s On First?”, a bar by Fenway Park. They split time between Florida and California during his offseason, as she is based in Los Angeles for studio work. She is also fluent in French. His favorite European city to visit has been Paris because of Taft’s familiarity with the language.
“It was kinda easy to be cruising around and feeling like you’re a local,” he says. “It’s nice.”
Taft was with Gilroy when the spotlight found him again in December. They were sitting together in an empty bar in northern Finland at the time that Gilroy received a call from Jim Johannson, a former Olympian and the general manager of Team USA’s hockey program. He informed Gilroy, who represented his country at the 2010 World Championships, as well as the 2016 and 2017 Deutschland Cup tournaments, that he had made the team.
“My phone magically worked,” Gilroy says. “We were up by the North Pole. We could tell our families. That was it.”
Five weeks later, Johannson died in his sleep back in Colorado. He was 53, and had taken pride in assembling a roster of unheralded players to chase a gold medal in South Korea. Gilroy is one of five KHL players on the U.S. team’s 25man roster. The lineup is an amalgam of minor leaguers, former NHL players and collegians. It ranges in age from BU forward Jordan Greenway, who is 20, to former Devils forward Brian Gionta, who is 38. Greenway, one of three collegians, stands 6-foot-6, 227 pounds. Gionta, the U.S. captain who is not affiliated with a team this season, stands 5-foot-7, 179 pounds. Matt is in the middle at 6-foot-2, 203 pounds.