Born to Score: Jimmy Vesey

From Ufa, Russia, to Potsdam, N.Y., the scene is the same.

A smooth-skating forward accelerates up his opponent’s wing, waiting for a teammate’s quick feed. Once he gets it, he knows what to do with it.

The result, whether it’s a far-side wrist shot for Team USA or an overtime one-timer for the Harvard men’s hockey team, speaks for itself: Jimmy Vesey was born to score.

IN HIS BLOOD

Vesey enters the 2014-2015 season as the Crimson’s great goal-scoring hope. The 6’2” junior has led the team in goals in both of his first two collegiate seasons, displaying an uncanny ability to generate offense off the rush and get pucks on net.

“One-on-one with a defender, he’s impossible to stop almost,” said Harvard junior co-captain Kyle Criscuolo, who will join Vesey on the team’s first line this year.

Vesey’s speed, skill, and long reach have produced memorable moments and high honors in recent years.

As a freshman, Vesey earned Ivy League Rookie of the Year honors and won a gold medal for the United States at the IIHF U20 World Championships in Russia, bolstering the team’s front line and netting a goal in the semifinal to upset Canada.

Last season, he adjusted to an enhanced role in Harvard’s offensive scheme and netted an overtime winner at Clarkson to secure the Crimson’s first three-game winning streak in over two years.

This year, he carries the expectations of a preseason first-team All-ECAC selection­—the only such honor for the Crimson.

On Saturday, Vesey will scan the stands of the Bright-Landry Hockey Center as he joins his teammates on the blue line for the first national anthem of his team’s season. He will be looking for about 10 to 20 friendly faces—cousins, aunts, and uncles—led by his father, Jim Sr., and his mother, Amy.

“They’ve sat in the same section [behind the Harvard bench] for the last two years at every home game,” Vesey says. “I always look up there during the starting lineups, national anthem and just kind of take a peek at who’s there.”

The Veseys will likely choose a different section this season, as the Crimson’s newly-renovated home facility has the team’s bench on the opposite side of the rink. Either way, the clan’s presence will remind the junior of the legacy and city he represents each night on the ice.

The name “Vesey” holds important sway in Boston hockey circles. Vesey Sr., a native of Charlestown, was a star center for Merrimack College in the 1980s and still holds the school’s all-time scoring record. After a seven-year professional career that included 15 games in the NHL, he retired in 1995 to focus on raising his two young sons, Jimmy and Nolan, with his high school sweetheart.

The two boys took after their father, who coached them from the time they could skate until the day they started high school.

Nolan, the younger of the two, starred as a top scorer for Austin Prep in Reading, Mass. and just began his first college season at Maine. Last June, the Toronto Maple Leafs selected him in the sixth round of the NHL Entry Draft.

Jimmy, meanwhile, earned a third-round selection from the Nashville Predators in 2012. After three years at the Belmont Hill School, Jimmy bolstered his pre-draft credentials by breaking the Eastern Junior Hockey League’s season points record with the Foxboro-based South Shore Kings in 2011-2012.

Vesey Sr. speaks proudly of his sons in a rich Bostonian accent. He considers their scoring abilities a gift, or at least something genetic.

“They were born to score,” Vesey Sr. said. “People always say, ‘You can teach skating, [but] you can’t teach height, [or] you can’t teach goal-scoring either.’ You can work on your shot, but from my experience, you’re born with it.”

Vesey Jr. speaks with a softer accent than his parents, who first met many years ago in a Charlestown elementary school. Born in Charlestown himself, Vesey lived the first seven years of his life in Boston’s oldest neighborhood before his family moved to North Reading, Mass.

Despite the distance, the town remained a central part of his upbringing. Vesey spent much of his pre-collegiate summers honing his hockey skills against cousins and friends at The Kitchen, a large roller hockey court just off Charlestown’s main street. He takes pride in his Boston identity as something he tries to honor, both on and off the ice.

“My parents are blue collar people, and Charlestown is a blue collar town,” Vesey said. “So I think it’s kind of in my blood…just the fact that I was raised in an environment where my parents tried to instill…a blue collar work ethic into me, and that’s something I’m trying to implement into hockey, school, and stuff like that.”

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Vesey’s lunch pail mentality has forced coaches, teammates, and trainers to take notice in recent months.

This summer, Vesey dedicated himself to improving the finer points of his defensive game in the hopes of becoming a more complete prospect.

Vesey trained with a group of 15 teammates at Harvard’s Palmer Dixon Strength and Conditioning Center and spent a week at the Predators’ prospect Development Camp.

Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91, a former Boston prep school and Harvard hockey standout himself, has observed an extra pep in Vesey’s step in the team’s first practices this season.

“As a coach, when you have guys that are special players, guys with some special talents, it’s really nice to watch them improve,” said Donato, who was a part of the Crimson’s only national championship-winning team as a sophomore forward in 1989. “They can do some things every day on the ice in practice where you shake your head and smile.”

Donato says that Vesey’s development reminds him of a young Alex Killorn ’12, a second line forward for the Tampa Bay Lightning and Harvard’s latest alum to break into the NHL.

The most dramatic improvement for Vesey this year has been his strength and conditioning. He committed himself to a more balanced diet last summer to trim body fat and add muscle.

Last fall, Vesey clocked in at 16 percent body fat. By last month, he had lowered that number to 11.5 while maintaining roughly the same weight.

“My eating habits the last few years were pretty bad,” Vesey said. “I am kind of a picky eater.”

Vesey has cut out soft drinks from his meals and pays attention to the proportion of starches and proteins on his plate. His commitment to the plan reflects the business-like approach that his family and friends say he takes to his game.

“He’s a guy who’s always competing,” Criscuolo said. “He’s not going to take a drill off.”

Every time he steps on the ice in a Harvard sweater, Vesey puts pressure on himself to produce. Last season represented a learning process for the then-sophomore, who became the opposition’s main target on a young team that suffered from injuries down the stretch.

His season shots on goal total skyrocketed from 79 to 145, but he edged his freshman goal mark by only two, 11 to 13, thanks to a difficult final seven games that held him scoreless. The Crimson finished second to last in the ECAC and was swept by Yale in the conference tournament’s first round.

This season, Vesey says he will try to relax more and let his “natural instincts take over.” His new linemates Criscuolo and sophomore center Alexander Kerfoot should help in this area. The pair propelled Vesey to a three-goal, one-assist performance in a preseason scrimmage in Montreal earlier this month.

Despite his conscious effort to manage expectations, Vesey is unafraid to speak of his season goals in concrete terms.

He wants to become the first Harvard player since Killorn to break the 20-goal barrier, and he wants to win the Crimson’s first Beanpot in over 20 years.

“He told me [that] Harvard hasn’t won a Beanpot since the year he was born, ’93,” Vesey Sr. said. “So that’s a kid thinking there, looking at stuff. He wants to put that jersey back on and get the respect back at Harvard that Donato and those guys who played before him had.”

As he begins his upperclassman campaign, Vesey looks to close on unfinished business.

“I came to Harvard because I believed that by coming here, we could be a team that competed for a national championship, and Beanpot, and ECAC titles,” Vesey said. “I wouldn’t want to leave here without achieving at least one of those goals.”

—Staff writer Michael D. Ledecky can be reached at mdledecky@gmail.com.