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Buffalo Sabres’ Odds To Sign Jimmy Vesey Are Slim To None

By Richard Spalding

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The Buffalo Sabres May currently be the only team that talk to the Hobey Baker Award winner, but odds are the young forward will sign elsewhere.

It’s time for a reality check, Buffalo Sabres fans: Jimmy Vesey is almost certainly not going to agree to come play in the 716.

Put aside any personal feelings this writer has toward the path Vesey chose to take – it’s irrelevant.

Focus instead on a few painful, yet surprisingly obvious facts:

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1. Jimmy Vesey hails from North Reading, Massachusetts.  He plays NCAA hockey for Harvard.  He skates in a Foxboro summer league.  He’s a hometown boy who grew up cheering for the Boston Bruins.  If you grew up in a city, rooting for their professional hockey team since as far back as you can remember, wouldn’t you jump at the chance to play for that organization?

For God’s sakes, just read some of the things he had to say in an interview with CSNNE.com’s Joe Haggerty Thursday:

"I’ve said it all along that Boston is definitely on my list of teams that I’d like to talk to. It’s a team that I’ve rooted for all my life, and it’s a team that I watched win the Stanley Cup in 2011. . . I’ll definitely be meeting with Boston in August. . . I was a huge Joe Thornton fan growing up. He wore No. 19. I wear No. 19. He was my favorite player. I got to know (Bruins defenseman) Torey Krug a little bit through playing with him at the world championships last year. So, it would be really cool to play with Torey and put on the Bruins jersey. It’s the team that I’ve watched for my whole life . . . I work out here in Foxboro with the Hayes brothers, and I’ve known them all my life.  I have a good relationship with (Bruins winger and Dorchester native Jimmy Hayes), and he had nothing but good things to say about (the B’s). To a little bit of an extent, I’m a homebody, and I definitely have a big crew of family and friends in the Boston area, so it would be comforting to have them around. Like I said, a lot of things are on my mind right now."

Hmm: Boston is “definitely” on the list of teams Vesey plans to meet with.  The Bruins are a team he has rooted for his whole life.  He’s life-long friends with Jimmy Hayes.  He’s a bit of a homebody.

Yep – sounds like he’s ready to leave the Boston area for the 716 any day now.

2. Jimmy Vesey has already met with the Buffalo Sabres front office.  He’s heard the team’s pitch.  He’s heard what rising star Jack Eichel has had to say about the organization.  If he liked what he heard, he could sign with the team today, tomorrow, whenever he wanted to -yet he continues to insist that he is going to wait until August 15 before he makes a final decision.

It’s not that Vesey has admitted that he has no interest in the Buffalo Sabres, but compare what he had to say about his meeting with the Sabres brass to his comments about the Boston Bruins organization (courtesy of WIVB.com):

"I think it was a good meeting to get a feel for what the process is going to be like . . . We are going to August 15th like I have said all along. But, to talk to a GM and a coach is going to give me an idea of what to expect August 15th.They have been really good with me thought out  the process and they wouldn’t create a circus. They are going to leave me alone now so, I have respected Buffalo throughout the whole thing."

Give him credit: he’s polite.  But saying that it was a good meeting to get a feel for what the process is going to be like is about as close as he can come to admitting that he was only going through the motions as you can get, people.  If you’re out job-hunting, and you either have an interview that did not go well, or went to an interview just to get the practice, that’s the sort of thing you would say: “It was a good feel for what the rest of my interviews will be like.”  Would you use those words if it was an interview that went really well, for a company you really wished you could work?

Nope.

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The only person who knows what Jimmy Vesey will do is obviously Jimmy Vesey himself, and maybe some of his closest family, friends, and his agent.  It’s impossible to say that there is absolutely no chance that Vesey will sign with the Buffalo Sabres, but the fans who want to give the Sabres 50/50 odds of signing this kid are missing all the signs.   He’s a hometown kid who has friends that play on his favorite team, so if the Boston Bruins want him, you have to think they will catch this fish.

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