A promising hockey player and college student from North Vancouver is being remembered by friends and teammates this week after he was killed in a shocking double murder-suicide in upstate New York this weekend.
Matthew Hutchinson, 24, graduated from Sutherland secondary in North Vancouver and was known locally as a talented hockey player who won the respect of his teammates.
“He was a hardworking honest player. He competed hard,” said Billy Coupland, who taught Hutchinson at Sutherland and coached him when Hutchinson played in the Bantam division with the North Shore Winter Club.
“Everybody respected him. He was just a good kid.”
Hutchinson went on to play with several junior A teams in the B.C. Hockey League, including teams in Quesnel, Chilliwack, Surrey and Coquitlam. He was also drafted to the Prince George Cougars in the Western Hockey League.
Hutchinson later went to college in New York, where he was a defenceman for the Geneseo Knights college hockey team. He also worked for the B.C. Wildfire Service in the summer and had looked forward to career in that area after he graduated from college this year.
“I saw him in the summer,” said Coupland. “He was excited about moving on to the next stage of his life.”
Coupland said he was shocked to learn on Sunday that Hutchinson had been killed.
Hutchinson was one of three young adults found dead in a house rented by students in the college town of Geneseo, New York state, around 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning. The bodies of Kelsey Annese, 21, a fellow student and member of the college’s women’s basketball team, and Colin Kingston, 24, a former student and former basketball player for the college, were also found.
Geneseo police department spokesman Jeffrey Szczesniak said Monday Kingston apparently stabbed Hutchinson and Annese to death with a large knife in the early morning hours, before turning the knife on himself.
Szczesniak said Kingston was apparently distraught over his breakup with Annese, his former girlfriend.
Police were called to the home after Kingston’s father called 9-1-1, saying he had just received a call from his son, who told the older Kingston he had harmed his former girlfriend. All three were dead by the time police arrived.
At the time of his death, Hutchinson was in his senior year at the college, studying geography and business, as well as playing hockey. He was also a member of Geneseo’s volunteer firefighting department.
While he grew up in North Vancouver, Hutchinson played hockey at the North Shore Winter Club and later for the North West Giants and B.C. Junior Hockey League’s Coquitlam Express team.
Jon Calvano, who coached Hutchinson with the North West Giants, recalled him as “a great kid” and “a great young man,” on Monday. “He wore a letter with us. He had great leadership skills,” said Calvano. “His teammates all respected his worth ethic and his dedication to his teammates.”
“He was an honest, tough, physical defenceman,” he said, describing Hutchinson as “kind of an old-time hockey player” in style.
Off the ice, Hutchinson “was a funny kid with a good sense of humour, but he also knew how to be serious and focused,” said Calvano. “He was an overall great guy. He was a kid who if you had a daughter you wouldn’t mind your daughter marrying.”
Calvano said he was in “disbelief and shock” when he heard that Hutchinson had been killed on Sunday. “He never was a kid who was in the middle of anything.”
Andrew Chanler, chief of the Genesco fire department where Hutchinson volunteered, described him as a “role model” and his death as “a tremendous loss for our department.”
Those who knew Hutchinson took to social media this week to express their condolences. “My son played junior hockey with Matt. He was a talented player and a nice young man. A senseless tragedy,” wrote Ken McNamara.
An online fundraising appeal started by Hutchinson’s sister Katelynn to help his parents attend memorial events in New York and bring Matt’s body back to Canada had raised $14,000 by Tuesday morning.
Coupland called Hutchinson’s death “heartbreaking” and said, “It’s going to take a long time for a lot of people who cared about him and loved him to try to make sense of it.
