When Toronto Maple Leafs prospect and recent draft pick Jeremy Bracco made the surprising decision to leave Boston College and join the CHL's Kitchener Rangers earlier this week, the hockey world reacted with shock and, in many instances, anger. Rumors and reports began to swirl almost immediately as to why, exactly, Bracco, who reportedly struggled with the decision whether to attend college or join the CHL during the summer, chose to leave the school so abruptly. To hear Bracco tell it, his reasoning was really pretty simple.
"You look at their record, the players in the room and the coaching staff," Bracco told Ryan Kennedy of The Hockey News recently, "there's the potential to win a championship and play for a Memorial Cup."
Bracco's right there. The Rangers are the only team in major junior to have yet to lose a game in regulation. They're currently sitting at 9-0-3 and look like one of the strongest teams in the league. And there's also an immediate place for Bracco in the Rangers' lineup. As Kennedy notes, Kitchener's top left winger Adam Mascherin is out indefinitely after injuring his shoulder. With Mascherin's injury, along with a host of other pulls and strains, Bracco looks set for big minutes right from the get.
But what about the talk that perhaps his decision to leave BC was school-related? According to Arthur Bailin of BC Interruption, the news of Bracco's departure came as a "complete shock" to "those inside" the Boston College program.
"My grades were good," Bracco said, per Kennedy. "But I wanted to really zero in on hockey. It's nothing against the program; it was great to be there for the month and a half I spent there."
But after that month and a half, after three points in five games with BC, Bracco called it quits. And if he's to be believed, it was all so he could get his professional hockey career started as quickly as possible.
