For 20-plus years, Matt Dubrey’s voice provided the backdrop to Union College’s rise as a college hockey program.
The mainstay of the Dutchmen and their Garnet Charger successors, he lived the team’s growth away from ECAC Hockey’s perennial bottom rung, and he’d been with the team as it pinballed through its Cinderella story over the past decade. He was there when Union won the national championship in 2014, and to this day, he remains the person most connected to parents, siblings, grandparents and extended family members watching Union hockey among fellow fans and friends.
In short, he best exemplified Union hockey, but after starting this season in his customary spot overlooking Messa Rink, his conspicuous absence from the men’s season opener against Army West Point led to the harrowing and awful discovery that he’d been hospitalized with acute lymphocytic leukemia. In an instant, the season that ordinarily would have been defined by wins and losses twisted on a dime, and the purpose of all of us in college hockey, particularly those who watch ECAC and work with the Union program, shifted to a greater, more real-life situation.
“I think we want to be a program that’s a family and takes care of each other,” said Union coach Josh Hauge. “It’s something that we always preach, but it made me realize that we take for granted some of the things that people do for us. He’s been here every single day, telling our story, and we don’t get to say thank you. To me, this is more of wanting to see him and spending a little bit of time with him to make sure that he knows how important he is to us. Someone’s going to keep his seat warm, but as soon as he’s ready, he’s right back in it because he is a big part of our family.”
Dubrey’s absence feels significantly harder for anyone connected to ECAC simply because the league doesn’t exist in its form without the personalities attached to its programs. A loving father and husband, he began commentating for Union in the immediacy before Nate Leaman’s arrival in Schenectady. As the team took flight in the mid-2000s, his voice cast the soundtrack to the team’s first-ever runs to postseason glory. As Rick Bennett led the team to the national championship and the years beyond its first banner, he rarely, if ever, missed games.
“When you look at Matt, he’s the voice of our program,” said Hauge. “A lot of the time, he’s giving the message to families, to recruits and to the community about our team, and he’s done a tremendous job. He’s been here for 22 seasons and has been a loyal supporter, that when you think about the stories that he has, it’s amazing for me, as a newer coach, just to hear about the program from him.”
“We started calling Union games together near the end of 2004, early 2005,” said broadcast partner Brian Unger. “He had been there a couple of years before me, and our relationship was multifaceted because we took the journey with watching Union hockey turn from a program that was clearly not a powerhouse by any stretch of the imagination, flourish and unbelievably reach the mountaintop with a national championship. But the other part of the relationship was just getting to know Matt and becoming fantastic friends with him.
“Being associated with a really great guy, he’s the kind of person who stops everything and is there by your side when the chips are down. As great as it is to work with him, even as the program went down the other side of the hill with some rough patches, by far the best part of anything I’ve done with Union hockey is getting to know Matt and calling him one of my best friends.”
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is defined by the National Cancer Institute as a type of cancer in which the bone marrow makes too many lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells. Signs and symptoms of it include fatigue and fever while presenting like the flu or other common diseases. It requires a blood and bone marrow test to receive a diagnosis and is mainly treated through long-term chemotherapy, per the American Cancer Society. Prognoses vary by age group, but five-year survival rates typically decline in their percentages as patient blocks get older.
A GoFundMe page established for Matt and his family explained that he began treatment immediately and will remain in the hospital for four weeks while battling the disease. Doubly worse, as a small business owner in the Capital District, it likewise meant that he wouldn’t be able to work through the busiest time of year between October and December – all while remaining off-air with Union.
“When you’re on the road, you’re together on the bus and sharing a hotel room,” said Unger. “You’re eating meals together and figuring out how to prepare for a broadcast, and that relationship so quickly translates into every other part of your life. You find out that you don’t like doing many things without your broadcast partner…that’s how close you become, and that’s what I think about him, his wife and his kids.”
“The amount of people that have reached out to him has been tremendous,” added Hauge. “It’s great to hear him talk about how excited he was that former coaches reached out, that former players stepped up and took some time out of their day to let him know how important he is and how important his family is to Union. I think you could sense how it would uplift him, so it means a lot to me that people have reached out to help him.”
Union recognized Dubrey’s impact ahead of its Homecoming and Family Weekend games against Mercyhurst this past weekend, but the season itself is taking on a larger meaning for a team expected to compete for one of ECAC’s more elite tiers because one of its most important parts isn’t at Messa Rink’s final season. Albeit temporarily, the celebration doesn’t feel right without his presence, and there isn’t a person within the conference – or college hockey – who won’t shed a tear when he’s able to return to his fabled booth.
“We talk about family here,” Hauge said. “And it’s trying to do better for people around us. He’s a big part of our family, and we’re going to compete hard for him every single night. He’s going to be fighting hard, so we want to do our part to fight with him.”
