Re: UND 2009-2010 Season Thread - The Lawnmower and Cookie tossing edition!
This makes it Frattin Post No. 5 since your online persona said it was done with the subject.
You can't be serious. Easier to take a dead end job and do nothing for the rest of his life?
You're right. I'm not serious. If Frattin lacked character, he wouldn't have been at UND to begin with.
Besides, I didn't say "smarter." I said "easier." I'm sure you're aware that many people, when faced with tough times, take the easy way out rather than making difficult decisions required to get their lives back on track. The easiest thing for Frattin to do would have been to drop out of school, drop out of hockey and not deal with his problems.
And what about the other more realistic option Frattin had which you ignored? That would have been the easier path, too, right?
Easier than going to college, play a game he was promised to play, in a place where the team reigned surpeme, and parlay it into something more? This question alone discredits anything you could say on the subject.
Come on. Nobody at the college level gets to play hockey because they were "promised." Talk about discrediting statements...
You continue to sell the notion that what Frattin did was "easy" because he never really left school and was never really out of UND's hockey program. With no evidence whatsoever to support it, you believe that there was some type of "'wink, wink' behind the scenes" agreement that enabled Frattin to return to UND no matter what.
The facts are that in five years of coaching at UND, Hakstol has never yanked a player's scholarship and suspended him indefinitely. And not only did Hakstol do that, but he also brought in another freshman forward early to replace Frattin on the roster. After Frattin was kicked off the team, he left school, he left town, he left the state and he left the country.
But rather than staying gone, he met the conditions Hakstol set for his return, re-enrolled at UND and returned to face up to his responsibilities and be held accountable for his actions.
I'm not saying what Frattin did was "noble" or "heroic" (your words, not my words or the words of any Sioux fan). I'm not nominating him for sainthood. He still has to prove himself, redeem himself and make something of the chance that he's been given. I hope that he will, but the jury is still out. The one thing I am sure about is that the past four months have not been easy for Matt Frattin.