[StrykerSteve]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2...I9GeO/amp.html

Horrible story, but one worth reading.

His father was far away on that chilly April afternoon, so 3-year-old Cullen Gove reached out to him in a video message, texted by the boy’s mother from a Central Massachusetts playground.

“I love you, Daddy,’’ Cullen said. “I miss you. I want you to feel better so you can come home.’’

But by then, his father, David Gove, a former Thayer Academy hockey prodigy who grew up skating on Cape Cod ponds, won a Stanley Cup ring, and until last year was a promising professional head coach, was beyond reach.

Gove was found shortly after Cullen’s text, lying on the floor of a Pittsburgh homeless shelter, dead of an apparent heroin overdose.

Now there will be no trial. Prosecutors have lost their victim and chief witness against Richardson, who 12 years ago was acquitted of raping another youth hockey prospect.

Richardson, 61, a former scout for the Dallas Stars and Calgary Flames who has served as an assistant hockey coach at Yale, Clarkson, Boston University, and Northeastern, lives in a Dorchester condominium where the alleged rapes occurred. In a brief conversation at his door, he declined to comment.