Re: UNH Wildcats 2012-2013 Season Thread
I see Mike Vecchione as a tragic figure.
He had the lifelong dream to play at UNH, at least that is what we hear on this board. UNH liked him enough as a player to recruit him, but when it came time to come in the coaches decided he needed more time to develop, right or wrong isn’t important to this part of the tragedy. UNH wanted him to develop playing in juniors rather than sitting on the bench and in practice on campus. (Note: I am not saying the UNH coaches were necessarily doing this for the right reasons, I honestly don’t know either way. This was potentially a numbers problem on scholarships too; we can all count players on a roster and speculate.)
Mike apparently also had a lifelong dream to play college hockey starting the 2012-2013 season. (Otherwise why did he so quickly bail on the first so important dream?) He clearly felt UNH was wrong, he was ready now, the indignity of it all, and was probably getting some whispers in his ear about how fantastic he is as a player. So on some advice from somebody in his life he believed he was ready right now. Mike decided not to go to UNH but instead he would have a bunch of other Hockey East teams banging down his door to come in right away. When that didn’t happen we heard about other Div I teams banging on his door, for right away.
As it turns out Mike head back to juniors for another year of seasoning, since by the outcome, the rest of the Div I hockey coaches agreed with the UNH assessment – Mike is going to be a good player but needs to develop. By all evidence that seasoning has worked and Mike is now a better player. Now Union is a fantastic school and it is great he is going there, I wish him the best of luck. He has probably ended up in the best situation, like most college players he isn’t likely to go pro, and Union will provide a fantastic education opportunity. Please note it is the kid who makes the school not the other way around, so Mike must take advantage of this opportunity.
The tragedy is he lost both his dreams: first playing for UNH (with some apparent emotional pain), second playing in college in 2012-2013. All we can hope is he learned the lesson of the tragedy he lived. From my view in the audience the moral (at this point of the story) is listen to the unbiased observers in your life for the real advice, if the advice giver is to close they may be biased or worse yet tell you what they think you want to hear. If you are very unlucky they may just be clueless on the subject, so clueless in fact to not know it.
