from Frank Seravalli of TSN,

In the end, the Nashville Predators couldn’t get close to prized prospect Jimmy Vesey. Literally.

A guaranteed spot on the top two lines, a chance to skate into the Stanley Cup playoffs three weeks after stepping off the ice as a Harvard student and the benefit of burning a year off his restrictive rookie contract were not enough to lure Vesey to the Music City.

It wasn’t even enough to secure a face-to-face meeting with the team that drafted him four years ago, Predators GM David Poile alleged.

“It’s a bizarre situation,” Poile told the Nashville Tennessean. “For whatever reason, and after all the time and resources that we invested in Jimmy Vesey’s development, we could not get a meeting with Jimmy, his family and his representatives all together. That’s the only thing I asked for after [last week] and they would not accommodate us on that.”...

Vesey will not gain any financial leverage elsewhere. The maximum salary on NHL entry-level contracts is $925,000, and he would have received the same maximum rookie attainable performance bonus structure ($2.85 million) with likely any team.

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