Unsigned Bracco focused on world juniors
Jeremy Bracco, selected in the second round, 61st overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 2015 NHL draft, appears to be in the club’s plans.
The New Yorker spent part of the off-season in Toronto training with the team’s specialized coaches, such as skating guru Barb Underhill, and is certainly holding up his end of the bargain on the ice (at least offensively) with stellar numbers this season for the Kitchener Rangers.
But Bracco, a member of Team USA’s world juniors team, remains unsigned — “all quiet right now,” Bracco’s agent, Michael Curran, said Wednesday.
The winger’s focus is on strutting his stuff in front of Leafs brass over the coming weeks.
“It’s the hockey mecca of the world,” Bracco said, his eyes lighting up, “so any time you can go and represent your country, show well…”
John Matisz, Postmedia Network
OSHAWA, Ont. — Jeremy Bracco can still hear the howls and yelps in his head.
Two weeks ago, when the Toronto Maple Leafs prospect extended his season-opening points streak to an absurd 26 games by bagging an OT goal for the Kitchener Rangers, Bracco’s teammates poured on the admiration.
“Some of the guys on my team were tracking it a little closer than me,” Bracco said Wednesday at the Tribute Communities Centre, temporary home of the United States’ under-20 national team. “When I did get the 26th point in overtime against Kingston, the guys were coming down the ice yelling ‘Streak!’”
Months of domination began with a three-point performance in Game 1 of the OHL schedule and ended with a point-free Game 27, which left Bracco’s final pre-world junior championship tally at 17 goals and 34 assists for 51 points in 27 games.
Over the holidays, however, Bracco’s early-season brilliance is largely irrelevant. At best, it’s a footnote during the world juniors.
The U.S., which boasts arguably the scariest collection of forwards among the 10 nations competing at this year’s tournament in Toronto and Montreal, aspires to smooth out its hilly results recently at the U-20 level.
Bracco, 19, has plenty of pace-pushing company in the dynamic Clayton Keller (all-world puck skills), opportunistic Alex DeBrincat (leads the OHL with 30 goals) and trusty alternate captain Colin White (strong two-way game).
“We have depth at the forward position to play an attacking system, a puck-possession system, and try to get at it,” said U.S. coach Bob Motzko, who intended to trim the roster from 26 to 23 players overnight.
There’s also captain Luke Kunin and his smarts, Jack Roslovic and his AHL experience … the list goes on and on for the offensive juggernaut which opens its preliminary-round schedule on Boxing Day against Latvia.
This team, on paper, has the horses to compete for a gold medal.
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“That Bob wants to play (an up-tempo) offence is a good thing to know,” said Keller, a 1.5-points-per-game centre in the early going of his freshman season at Boston University. “Everyone up front has skill and I think that’s the way we’re going to play — a fast, skilled game.”
Keller, the final cut from last year’s bronze medal-winning squad, is an anomaly in a tournament lacking attention-grabbing star power. He is slight (listed at a generous 5-foot-10, 175 pounds) but has stickhandle-in-a-phone-booth hands that should scare the Americans’ Group B opponents.
It’s not surprising limiting turnovers and staying disciplined are two items high on the coaching staff’s wish list. Can’t freewheel all day and hope to win a medal, Motzko said.
“The word you’re going to preach is, you want to play up-tempo — our guys are built to play up-tempo and we’ve got size to play physical — but the big word is ‘responsible,’” the bench boss added. “We have to play responsible hockey.”
The head coach of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, Motzko was a member of the U.S. coaching staff in Malmo, Sweden, for the 2014 world juniors. An assistant then, he will be making his international head-coaching debut in __canada and looking to impress.
No. 1 defenceman Charlie McAvoy should be a calming influence and a guy Motzko can lean on. The Boston Bruins prospect is the team’s other alternate captain and projects to be the busiest American. Seth Jones’ brother, Caleb Jones, is another 19-year-old blueliner primed for a hefty workload.
“Everybody is trending up” is how Motzko on Wednesday described the to-be-trimmed roster. The three goalies — Tyler Parsons, Joe Woll and Jake Oettinger — were not excused from that remark. The expectation is that they are capable of holding down the fort.
Taking a step back to assess the big picture, the 2010s has been an inconsistent decade for the U-20 team south of the border. Four medals (two gold and two bronze) is no small feat, sure, but two fifth-place finishes and a seventh are humbling.
Fair to say a ‘Streak!’ would be welcomed stateside.
By Bracco, by Motzko, by the bunch.
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