Jimmy Hayes is dead at age 31. I just typed those dreadful words with my own fingers and I still cannot believe it. Don’t want to, either.

It’s hard to properly describe the sense of loss that looms over the neighborhood. Jimmy Hayes meant so much to people from Dorchester, especially in tight-knit Neponset where he and his brother and sisters were raised. His family—led by his dad, big Kevin, and mom Sheila— is revered in this community. And it’s not just because the Hayes brothers were hockey prodigies who made it to the highest levels of their sport. It’s because they did it while staying firmly rooted in, and devoted to, this place, always coming back to share their successes and their goodwill with their neighbors.

“Jimmy is the epitome of that saying, ‘He never forgot where he came from,’” says Pat Brophy, a longtime coach in the Dorchester Youth Hockey program.

A national champion with Boston College and a silver-medal-winning Olympian on Team USA, Jimmy even earned a Stanley Cup ring during his brief time with the Chicago Blackhawks. He played for two years with the Bruins, scored a hat trick in front of the Garden crowd in 2015, and pummeled Lars Eller of the Montreal Canadiens in a Winter Classic at Gillette. That last part alone earns you hero status with Dot kids of all ages.

The sportswriter Pete Blackburn tweeted on Monday that Jimmy “may as well have been a god in Dorchester.”

As true as that is, it’s also true that Jimmy didn’t carry himself like a deity. Like the popular t-shirt says, he knew he was “just a kid from Dorchester.”

More precisely, he was a kid from Westglow Street, St. Ann’s parish. His jersey hangs in a place of honor at the Eire Pub in Adams Corner and high up on the wall at the Devine Rink, where he first laced them up for the Dorchester Chiefs. It’s a special place for the Hayes clan, so special that Jimmy’s dad Kev is a still regular there, watching the kids’ teams compete, even though he has no “skin in the game,” so to speak.

While he was still a star on the number one-ranked BC team, Jimmy started a tradition that his brother Kevin continued: He’d bring over members of the Eagles team and his coach, Jerry York, to conduct clinics for the Dot kids at the Devine.

“The kids absolutely loved them,” recalls Shaun O’Sullivan, vice-president of DYH. “They’d run drills, bring in pizzas. All of those kids still have pictures with the Hayes boys. This is a family that just gave so much to this community. Jimmy really showed the kids how to conduct yourself with class and a great sense of humor.”

There’s no answers yet to the whys or the hows behind the sudden death of a strapping 31-year-old with a beautiful young family and a still-bright future.

Right now, the people who care about the Hayes clan— and they make up a very large number— are starting to think about the right ways to memorialize Jimmy’s life both on and off the ice.

“We have to find the strength right now to celebrate his life and to support this family,” said O’Sullivan. “With all of the accolades and the heights that he reached in athletics, people will always point and say: ‘Now that’s how things are done. That's a leader right there.’”