UPDATE: Report is wrong, Bracco to Attend Boston College

Originally Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch tweeted out that it appeared almost certain that Jeremy Bracco would be joining the Kitchener Rangers of the Ontario Hockey League. As you can see from the tweet above, Bracco is committed to attending Boston College.

As you can see from the original story below, this certainly wouldn’t have been my preference for Bracco, but it’s the decision he made. Boston College is much more of a local choice for Bracco as his Long Island, NY home is short train ride away. 

Bracco joins a team that has several other NHL prospects currently developing on it, but will likely be taking a step back this year with the departure of Noah Hanifin, and Thatcher Demko. 

This provides some closure on the “where is he going to play story” and does give the Leafs a little longer to wait and see what they have in Bracco before getting him under contract, and certainly his development shouldn’t be a worry as Jerry York has produced a number of NHL players during his long tenure at BC.

Still, this means that Bracco won’t be right under our noses and we’ll have to put in that extra effort of finding online streams of college hockey games.

There’s been on going speculation that Jeremy Bracco would soon be making a decision between attending Boston College or joining the Kitchener Rangers. It’s starting to look like that decision is now made.

The benefits for Bracco in making this decision seem pretty obvious, he’s going to be a stone’s throw away from his pro team, he’s able to sign an entry level contract and receive a signing bonus, and he won’t have to live in Boston.

Bracco will also get the chance to play a significant role on what looks to be a less than great Rangers team, as a number of their key players will be departing for the pros. Of course it’s entirely possible that the Leafs staff are already hard at work on moving him to the unofficial farm team of the Leafs, the London Knights, but kidding aside, they can’t put everyone there.

Moving Bracco away from the NCAA likely means that the Leafs see Bracco as player who can at least contribute and grow in the AHL sooner than later, and wished to avoid the longer NCAA path to the pros. It’s also possible that Mike van Ryn is held in high regard for his development abilities.

No matter what the reasoning this looks like the direction that Bracco is going, though it still hasn’t been confirmed. For most Toronto fans it should be encouraging to have another worthwhile prospect to go watch instead of attending Leafs losses.

UPDATE: