hiii, just wondering if there’s any lore you can share about Will and the guys like Jan, Aram, Nolan who were at his 4th of July Cape hang but are lesser known in connection with Will than Leno or Gabe? Is there like a divide between the closeness of the BC line and the rest of the guys or does it just kinda appear that way bc the BC line is best known?
Hi anon!
So there's a lot of interesting things here with these lesser known players that Will played with at BC:
Jan Korec is the easy one - he's from Slovakia and basically met the guys at BC. However since he is a rising senior I imagine he's close with all the other seniors/senior-age players, hence why we've been seeing a lot of him this summer! I was told by a very reputable source that he's studying engineering and is very smart (aka typical goalie, we stan).
Nolan Joyce and the Joyces: ah Nolan Joyce. You thought Will Vote was always there, well so is Nolan Joyce, and oftentimes it's not just him, there's usually one or more other Joyces to be found. Nolan is a Massachusetts native and very local to Will Smith. He ran in similar hockey circles to Will growing up (BC Jr. Eagles, St. Sebastian's School) and also played on the Chicago Steel with you guessed it one Macklin Celebrini. Nolan's older brother Connor was a junior when he, Will, and the other BC guys were all freshmen, and younger brother Gavin seems to be very close to a lot of BC players, including Jacob Fowler who he seems to always be hanging out with/posting (interestingly enough Jacob is from Florida and played junior hockey in Ohio so his attachment to the Joyces seems to be purely a BC connection; also he seems to just be in Massachusetts all summer, does the dude not go home???)
Aram Minnetian: Aram! Aram, like other former BC teammate Drew Fortescue, knows Will and the gang from the NTDP. He's from New Jersey and played a lot of hockey between Connecticut teams and New Jersey teams before ending up in Michigan, so he definitely knows the BC Line guys well. Same goes for Drew, who'd actually shown up in tournaments with Will and Voter before the NTDP.
Timmy Delay: so he's not explicitly in the July 4th picture BUT he's been posted a lot with both Will and Gabe this summer, so let's include him. Another Massachusetts native who also knows Will from similar hockey circles (BC Jr. Eagles, St. Sebastian's School) and also has a bunch of siblings that also seem to play hockey and by extension are friendly with the guys; if Nolan Joyce is the Will Vote to Will Vote, Timmy Delay is the Will Vote to Nolan Joyce, and that's saying something about how relevant he is.
So long story short, yes, these guys are definitely good friends with a lot of the BC players, including the BC Line, and the divide does appear like that simply due to popularity. You probably don't hear about them because, with the exception of Aram and Drew who were at the NTDP...these guys are not as good, nor do they have the sort of chemistry/connection that made the BC Line so popular. With that being said, I would say it's a safe bet to say Will is decently friendly with all of them, especially the guys who live in the same area of Massachusetts that he does. Gabe and Leno might not be as much, simply because they're from other areas/not around, and again, Will ran in similar hockey circles/overlapped on teams with the Joyces and the Delays, so they're definitely more childhood-friend status then the other BC players who came onto the scene much later. With that being said, Gabe, Leno, and Fowler all got an extra year playing with them that Will didn't get, so they could all be decently close as well! Safe to say that they are all good friends and should be seen as such.
