Steve Eso Junior Review

[Eso 117]

Steve Eso grew up in Flin Flon, Manitoba (not really, but what a fun name for a town). Like the overwhelming majority of middle-class kids from the prairies, Eso was on skates by the time he was 3, and playing organized hockey at 4. He played pond hockey after school most days in the winter, as well as having house league minor hockey a few times per week at the local rink. He didn't take it very seriously as a youngster, but enjoyed it both athletically and socially. He went through many of the common hockey brat rites of passage - pizza parties after a game with the team as an eight year old, road trips to out of town tournaments driving through terrible snowstorms. In high school, Eso tried out for and became the captain of the school team, and it was here that he was noticed by the parents of some of the more competitive kids.

 

His name circulated around the local rep systems, and he ended up getting invited to play bantam hockey for the local single-A team. Here Eso really had to step up his game and start treating it seriously, not just something that he did for fun, as most of the people he was playing against now were the kind of kids who went to big money hockey camps run by washed up pro hockey players in the summer, who always had brand new top of the line equipment, and were driven to compete hard. Eso developed a reputation as a strong skater with good vision on the ice, who played hard but clean, and who usually kept a level head on the ice. As a two-way center, Eso became captain of the bantam team his second year there, both because of his skills on the ice, and his calm "lead-by-example" demeanor which let him get along well both with his teammates and coaches.

 

After graduating out of the bantam program, Eso was drafted to a triple-A midget team in Southern Ontario. Here he found another huge step up in the level of the competition - Eso was used to being either the best, or one of the best players on every team he had been on up to this point in his life, and now he was surrounded by players who also had been the best player on their team growing up. A broken collarbone from a hard hit behind the net made him lose half of a season as a 17 year old, but he returned in time for the playoffs to help lead his team to a deep playoff run. While fielding calls from some of the major junior teams in Canada, Eso was also asked if he would be interested in declaring eligibility for the VHLM. Wanting to keep professional options open as much as possible, Eso decided to allow himself to sign with the Mexico City Kings in the middle of the VHLM season, and then he would be entered in the VHLM draft proper the following summer.

 

 

513 words

Edited March 28, 2021 by Eso