Love of hockey propelled Esche to pros

Robert Esche started out as a football player. He was a Whitestown Pop Warner quarterback, and his favorite player was Chicago Bears Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton. He did follow the Utica Devils, then in the midst of a six-season American Hockey League run, and went to a lot of games at the Utica Memorial Auditorium. There wasn’t much thought about actually playing the game himself until his younger brother was signing up for youth hockey. His father asked him if he wanted to do the same.

Yes, he did, even if he had never skated a day in his life. He was 11 years old, and it wasn’t quite what he expected.

“The first day I wanted to quit,” he said.

But his father encouraged him to give it some time.

“I loved it the second day,” Esche said.

His life has centered on hockey ever since, and led him on a long journey through the game – junior hockey, world junior championship play, the American Hockey League, a solid career in the National Hockey League, several seasons in Europe, Team USA in the Olympics and World Cup, and now as an entrepreneur in his hometown, running the Aud as CEO of Mohawk Valley Gardens and serving as president of the Utica Comets in the AHL.

The game has given him a great deal. What does he love about it?

“There is no place to hide,” Esche said. “You are a teammate or you are not. You sacrifice individual glory for the good of the team, or you don’t. And I think it takes a very tough human being to do this.

“There are so many athletic tools needed. It’s the

fastest sport out there. Read and react. You’ve got to be intelligent. It offers challenges.”

Esche wasn’t a teenager yet when the made the team at Notre Dame High School. His coach there, Kevin Neejer has a photo of that squad on the wall of his workshop at CNY Awards. Esche is on the far left in the first row, wearing his goalie gear and a big, chubby-cheeked smile. He obviously was overjoyed to be there.

Neejer, who has followed Esche’s career ever since, admits he didn’t see a future NHL goalie in front of him.

“No, no,” he said. “But he loved the game and he worked hard.”

Notre Dame did not have a strong program, and the next year it was mothballed. Esche transferred to Whitesboro, and played two seasons – rarely starting – under Borden Smith, one of the stars of the great Clinton Comets teams of the late 1960s.

Like Neejer, Smith had no idea he had a future NHL player in his fold, but he did know he was coaching a very determined young man.

“We had 50 or 60 kids come out for the team, but I didn’t have any choice but to keep him,” he said. “He was the star of the tryouts. You couldn’t get him out of the net. He wanted to be in there all the time. He had that desire and ambition to be a great goaltender.”

Smith had another future NHL player, Mark Mowers, when he was coaching the Warriors – Mowers and Esche were Whitesboro teammates for one season – and he’s proud to have had some role in their success.

“But I had no idea they would go that far,” he said. “They both had as much desire as you could have. They were both gung-ho to play hockey.”

Esche was gung-ho, for sure, obviously was physically gifted, and he drew some inspiration from Payton.

“I loved everything about him,” Esche said. “The way he carried himself. He was such a little warrior. I’m still a Chicago Bears fan.”

Other favorites were Hall of Fame goalie Terry Sawchuk, who died long before Esche was born, and Utica Devils goalie Chris Terreri, who went on to a long career in the NHL.

“I thought he was awesome; very athletic, agile,” said Esche, who eventually faced Terreri across the ice.

Esche’s estimation of his own physical talent is modest, but he has a good idea about what got him to where he is.

“I never thought I was a good goalie,” he said. “I thought of myself as a really competitive human being. Having that competitiveness would get you through anything.”

Where does that competitiveness come from?

“I think you hear it so much at the NHL level: I can’t stand losing,” he said. “There is nothing worse. It’s a horrible feeling. Maybe that competitiveness comes from that.

Esche went to play junior hockey after his freshman year of high school, starting out with the Gloucester Rangers in the Central Canada Hockey League – he answered an advertisement for an open tryout – then spent three seasons with the Detroit and Plymouth Whalers in the Ontario Hockey League after being selected in the 10th round of the OHL draft.

The Phoenix Coyotes selected him in the sixth round of the 1996 NHL draft. He played for Team USA in the World Junior 20-and-Under championships in 1997 and again the next year, when he started four games and drew attention with a 3.22 goals-against average and .922 save percentage. He signed with the Coyotes at the end of that season, and his career took off from there.

Esche fondly remembers his youth hockey and football coaches like Glenn Reaves and Dick Buddle, and credits some of the old Clinton Comets with helping him develop throughout his career. That is one reason you see so much Comets history displayed at the Utica Memorial Auditorium, and why you are very likely to see some of the old-time players themselves at every game.

“Pete Prevost, Bordy Smith, Dave Armstrong, Ian Anderson; all of those people had an amazingly big part of my success,” he said.

The No. 1 influence, though, was his father, Robin, the guy who urged him to give youth hockey one more day.

“He taught me to push myself,” he said. “I was very lucky to have my

father in my life.”

Esche is a businessman now, his playing days behind him. How difficult has that been for him to make that transition?

“Not very hard.” He laughs. “I treat it like a big locker room. I genuinely love our staff. They’ve been terrific.”