Remembering Eric Nesterenko (1933-2022)

Eric Nesterenko won a Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks in 1961 in a professional career that spanned from 1951 to 1976.

I was saddened to hear the passing this week of Eric Nesterenko at the age of 88. Nesterenko was always someone I could call up to chat hockey, and talk about the old days with as he was very generous with his time. I just wish I had taken him up on his offer to go skiing with him in Vail, Colorado! Here is a piece I had written on Eric for my past book “Golden Boys: The Top 50 Manitoba Hockey Players of All Time.”

How many former NHL players do you know that have also worked as a disc jockey, a stockbroker, a travel broker, a freelance writer, a university professor, and a ski instructor at some point in their life? I only know of one, and that's Eric Nesterenko, who is my pick for the most interesting person ever to play in the National Hockey League. Oh, and did I mention that Eric also took up odd jobs like driving a loader and diesel Cat in the arctic. He has also acted, playing the father in the great hockey movie "Youngblood."

That's a lot of jobs for anybody no doubt, but especially for someone who spent over twenty seasons playing in the NHL as one of the leagues more dominant right wingers. Nesterenko recalls, "I did all of those, tried them out and every one of them was fun. When I was in Chicago I made decent money, but always thought I needed more so I worked these summer jobs. It was fun doing all those things."

The book Players: The Ultimate A-Z Guide of Everyone Who has Ever Played In the NHL might have said it best in that, "Eric was a player that could do everything well. He scored, played physical, stickhandled nicely, and backchecked."

Eric Nesterenko was born in Flin Flon on October 31st 1933. Flin Flon is and always has been a mining hub. Located on the border of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, with the majority of the town being in Manitoba territory, Flin Flon was founded back in 1927 by the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company to mine the large copper and zinc ore resources that were located in that area. Flin Flon got its town name from the lead character in an old novel called 'The Sunless City' by J.E. Preston Muddock. The main character in that book was Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, and from that, the name was shortened and the town became Flin Flon.

"Hockey was an indelible part of the culture in Flin Flon. I lived across the street from an outdoor complex run by the mine (Hudson Bay Mining + Smelting), which had four hockey rinks and a gigantic pleasure skating rink. It was great because winters in Flin Flon back then were at least five months," said Nesterenko. "So every day after school, every night after supper and all day Saturday/Sunday, we skated and/or played hockey. We always tried to get a game going and our de facto coaches were the older players. We'd get a game going and they'd allow us to play with them. We were forced to pass the puck because the players were bigger, faster, and stronger than us. You learn some of the basic aspects of the game without formal coaching, which I find is really interesting. I think a lot of kids nowadays are over coached at an early age. They won't let the kids play and learn some of the basics on their own."

Eric goes on to talk about his childhood in Flin Flon, "My father was a skater and always bought me decent skates. Also, when I started to play he got me my first hockey stick and puck to play with. My dad worked for the mine as a chemist. He knew six languages, and was a very smart man. My parents were from Ukraine but were political refugees who escaped the Russian Revolution and moved to Canada. I loved growing up in Flin Flon. I played in Winnipeg in the 1950s and I went back up to Flin Flon for a visit for four days in July one year. When I was a kid it seemed like a very large place, but when I went as a grown-up, it really was just a small town.

"They had a senior team in Flin Flon and my dad used to take me to watch the games sometimes," Eric said. "When I lived there, it was a covered arena with natural ice. It had a roof, but it was minus 30 below outside and maybe zero inside. The lobby was heated and so were the dressing rooms at least. They also had pipes running underneath the seats. But the outdoor rinks are where I played mostly growing up. The rinks were part of a big operation run by the mine, and I think there were other outdoor rinks in town, but the thing I remember mainly was that the mine ran the recreational complex, and it was called Jubilee Park."

Nesterenko was a good hockey player back in Flin Flon for a little youngster, but when he and his family moved to Ontario, his hockey career really took off. "When I was ten years old, we moved to Toronto. The first formal team I played for was a peewee team and it was an elite team in Toronto, and when I was playing there I realized that I could play with all these guys that were formally coached. In fact, I could play better than most kids there. In Toronto there was a league called the OHA and when I was 15 years old I ended up playing Junior B hockey, and the next year I was playing Junior A with the Toronto Marlboros. That's when I realized that I probably had some talent, since I was one of the top scorers in the league."

From the Marlboros, it was on to the NHL for Nesterenko. The Leafs brought him in as an eighteen year old for one game during the 1951-52 season. The next season, Eric became more of a fixture for the Maple Leafs, playing in 35 games. Nesterenko recalls the experience of his early NHL days, "They decided to bring me up because in those days you could play three games in the NHL and still maintain your so called amateur status − although we all get paid to play major junior hockey. We actually made quite a lot of money playing junior. I remember my first game during my first real season in the league because I scored two goals and an assist. Jean Beliveau was brought in by Montreal at the same time, and when I got the goals against Boston, I got a lot of local publicity. Conn Smythe figured he might get some free publicity for the team if he brought me in as an eighteen year old, and to be honest I really wasn't ready for the NHL and that was a big mistake. I've resented Toronto ever since. I actually quit hockey when I got sold to Chicago, but they kept after me to play so I only played weekend games for the Blackhawks since I was going to school at the University of Toronto. I did that for my first two years with Chicago, and after that they wouldn't let me do that anymore, I'd have to join the team full-time. At least I got two years of college, and those years I did that, I had some of my best years as a player where I just travelled to the games by myself and then afterwards, I'd fly back to Toronto and go to school, as well as workout with the university team. I'm probably the only guy to ever to do that in the history of the league so looking back, it seems crazy that an NHL team let someone play only part-time."

Nesterenko would go on to have a lot of great moments in his career, although none really compare to his one and only Stanley Cup championship with the Blackhawks in 1961. Eric remembers that season vividly, "It was a great year. Our big stars were young and emerging players like Stan Mikita, Bobby Hull and some others. We were a good team and in the last twenty games of the regular season, we won 18 of them. We then beat Montreal and Detroit in the playoffs. It was only a six team league in those days and everyone kind of knew each other. There were no bad players. Sure, some were better than others, but everyone was good. Our Blackhawks could have won, or should have won an additional two or three Stanley Cups. The worst one we lost was in the 7th game against Montreal in 1971. That was just heartbreaking."

Eric forged out a reputation in the league as a shadow, hounding the top scorers in the league like Gordie Howe, Johnny Bucyk and Frank Mahovlich. Nesterenko accepted the thankless job without complaint and became quite proficient in this line of work. His long reach helped him to check and his use of his elbows kept the opposition on alert at all times.

Eric goes on to talk about the Blackhawk squad that has been very successful in recent years, "The current Chicago Blackhawks are a really well run organization with those three Stanley Cups in six years. They have a promotion called the Blackhawk Convention in town. They've had eight of them in the last eight years. It's in the middle of summer and it's an amazing time! Thirty thousand people showed up at a fifteen hundred-room hotel in Chicago. It was quite the event to say the least."

Nesterenko spent 16 seasons with the Blackhawks and was one of the team's key contributors throughout the years. Despite his long tenure with the club, Eric never considered himself to be one of the leaders on the squad. "I don't know if I was ever a leader. I was probably one of the people that helped develop the culture of the team. We were a very good team defensively and had some real good offensive players. Plus we had Glenn Hall who was an instigator of the defensive style of play. Bill Hay was another good contributor. We were just a mature team that really liked each other, and I think I always had a place on the team, although I probably wasn't a leader. I think that being a leader is overrated anyway!"

When it was all said and done, Eric retired after 1219 NHL games in which he scored 574 points. He played in two NHL All-Star Games (1961, 1965) and of course has that one Stanley Cup ring that he won in 1961. It was a great career by any players standards, and for Eric, he left the game when he felt the time was right. When he retired he was one of the few players in the history of the NHL that had skated in over twenty seasons. "My career was so long ago, the whole thing seems like a blur. Overall I think it was a great way to live and it was very exciting too, every day. I was fortunate not to get hurt much since I tended to stay out of trouble. For the first three quarters of my career, I enjoyed the travel to New York and Boston. And Montreal was a magical place. It was an interesting way to live and in the end I decided to retire because I was tired of living in hotel rooms. I also didn't really enjoy flying. When my hockey career was over, I quickly realized that I was an adrenaline junkie, and the afterlife of playing was basically really dull for a while, so I found some things to do. I think that's the problem with pro athletes that played a long time, when they retire, life can be boring unless they really have a plan to make the transition to regular life."

After he retired from the game, Eric moved to Vail, Colorado and became a ski instructor. He talks about that decision to go all rocky mountain high and come to Colorado, "I've been in Vail for 35 years. I ended up seeing a psychiatrist and he kept asking what did I really like to do with my time? What gave me some excitement that I got from playing hockey? When I quit hockey, I went to Switzerland and worked as a coach in Lausanne. While I was there I picked up on this little activity called skiing and, right from the beginning, it gave me that thrill. It occurred to me that I really liked skiing and my psychiatrist told me why don't I make a life out of it. It's not a very big life, but it certainly has given me an awful lot of pleasure."

Of all things in the world and all the cool jobs that Eric worked throughout his life, it was skiing that gave Nesterenko the biggest thrill since he left the hockey world. Now at 83 years old, Eric still goes at it on the ski slopes. When I talked to him for this book he gave me an open offer if I ever wanted to come to Vail and go skiing with him. An offer that I'd be stupid not to take up at some point!

"I still ski. I skied 120 days last year. I worked about 15, only part time since I only have a couple clients left that aren't dead, or have quit skiing. I only have two or three that are left and the company allows me to teach on a part time basis. I still love to ski and Vail itself is such a nice place to live. The contrast to living in Vail to Chicago is startling. Small town living to the big bustling city, and I realized that I like the small town living very much. Vail is a very sophisticated place. We have a great culture here and people come from all over the world. I've been here long enough and people do recognize me, but there are lots of people here who are much bigger celebrities than I ever was. And it really is a live and let live town. People don't bother you, they really don't, and I like that. However, during the Blackhawks run in 2015, people were coming up to me so that was kind of fun!

The coach of the Blackhawks, Joel Quenneville, has a place here in Vail, and when the Olympics were going on in 2014, he had a two-week break. So he phoned me up and we went skiing together and had some real nice conversations. I really liked his philosophy. He really lets his players play and doesn't over coach. They're really well organized and he really supports the idea that players get to know each other and support each other. Plus the management is really smart because they're willing to spend money to win and buy good players."

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