Yeah that's the main thing, Utica and Vancouver, what will they be doing? I can't agree with Luckylarry that Rathbone is too good for Utica, since defence
is a big part of the D job and Rathbone's NCAA defensive play didn't really stand out in a positive way, unlike with Hughes for example. He very well might
have to improve the D side of his game while learning to be a pro in Utica . . . if Utica even has a season. That's the rub.
And then there's Vancouver. Will the Canucks have a season? And what will that look like? The virus situation keeps evolving . . .
Harvard is having the freshmen in the Yard dorms as usual for the fall semester, but they'll be doing distance learning from their suites, with no
physical classes. Then they'll leave town and the seniors will come into the houses for their final spring semester. The sophomores and juniors are
screwed. No Harvard for most of them all year, except with distance learning from home. Expect many of them to take leaves of absence, for which Harvard has traditionally had a wonderfully open and easy policy. Rathbone will be a junior, so, unless the upcoming league athletics announcement says something different, he won't be playing college hockey this coming season. So . . . Vancouver and Utica, I'm looking at you. Or maybe Europe?
Rathbone is a townie so he could easily stay home, study and work out, keep track of whatever the Bruins are doing, and keep running the clock on the period the Canucks hold his rights--unless the rules get changed on account of the viral disruption of normalcy. But if an NHL / AHL season actually happens this fall, he could sign and get on with his hockey career, earning big bucks for a college kid wherever he plays. The virus has given him an honourable reason for leaving school, or so it seems to me as a Harvard grad. Rathbone has already in effect sat out an NCAA year following his draft,
opting instead to continue playing prep school hockey for one more season before entering Harvard. Why sit out yet another season? That's really bad for development, and meanwhile your former D teammates and athletic peers, Fox and Marino, are cruising toward their *second* NHL contracts and the end of their ELCs. The sense I get from listening to Rathbone's radio interview last year is that he's more of an athlete than a scholar. I've been wrong before and I could easily be wrong again, but I think that, if the Canucks continue to want him, Rathbone will sign. It's the advice I'd give if I were his dad. He can afford to finish his Harvard degree at any future time he likes, if that's important to him. But he needs to keep playing hockey, and he might as well get paid for playing it.