Arizona pair strives for NHL berths  by Shawn P. Roarke | NHL.com Senior Writer

Sometimes, the grandest dreams of little boys do come true.

A decade ago, a pair of Arizona pre-teens were brash enough to suggest aloud that they believed that one day they could play for their city’s hometown NHL team, the Phoenix Coyotes.

Those two boys – young men now – are on the brink of possibly making their dream come true. David Spina and Bryan Esner — childhood friends born a week apart back in 1983 — were free-agent invitees taking part last week in the Phoenix Coyotes summer developmental camp, which ended Wednesday afternoon.

“We’ve been talking about this since we were 13-years-old,” Spina said. “We said someday that’ll happen. Well, that day has come.”

”It’s definitely special to do this,” Esner said. “It’s a great experience and it’s something I am glad we can experience together.”

The camp was dominated by players with more impressive pedigrees – including six first-round picks – but strong showings by the two local lads could lead to spots on the franchise’s depth chart – if not roster spots with the parent club – for the upcoming season.

“Being home and being with this organization is definitely a little surreal because people in the crowd know who you are and you are out there with (Coyotes coach) Wayne Gretzky,” said Spina, who played college hockey at Boston College. “It’s definitely a DisneyLand experience. It’s too good to be true almost.”

Almost.

But Spina and Esner know that they have earned this opportunity. They overcame the stigma of being from a non-traditional youth hockey market like Arizona. When they started playing as kids, there were just two rinks in the Phoenix area.

And, they know they have done everything to make that unlikely dream — uttered as youngsters while sitting in the stands at Coyotes games – one step closer to coming true.

“We have worked so hard to get to this point,” Esner said. “We don’t want to let the camp fly by without realizing how cool it is to be with the hometown team. But at the same time, we both feel like we should be here.”

Back in the formative days, the two often found themselves at games sharing big dreams because their parents shared season tickets to the Coyotes, who moved from Winnipeg to Phoenix in 1996 when the boys were 13.

Sure, they talked about playing in the NHL; the way all kids talk about it at that age. But some would suggest that maybe the two local boys have cooked up a bit of revisionist history here to tell a good story. Not so, says Esner.

“It’s a true story,” he says. “We’d go around the arena there and would idolize guys like (Keith) Tkachuk and (Jeremy) Roenick. We’d go to a lot of games together and as cliché as it sounds; we grew up idolizing the Coyotes and wanting to play here.”

The youngsters were already fast friends by the time they hatched their dreams. They had met five years earlier, joining the Phoenix Junior Roadrunners program as 8-year-olds. Spina, originally from Seattle, and Esner, who had moved from Cleveland, found a bond through hockey that has lasted to this day.

They also learned for the first of many times how to exceed expectations with that Roadrunners team. Of the 14 players on that Mite team, Spina says that nine went on to earn Division I scholarships.

“We had a good group that stuck together and played together all the time,” Spina said. “We had a lot of good players on that young team and we had great parents that really supported us. It was hard to get ice and they drove us everywhere in the early morning and it was hard to get good competition so we flew to Minnesota and to Vancouver to play teams.”

“That’s what we did, we lived, breathed and ate hockey all the time.”

Those experiences were the first steps in the unlikeliest of journeys by both Spina and Esner to reach the pro game.

Spina went to BC after a run with the Texas Tornadoes of the North American Hockey League and a stint with the United States National Team Developmental Program. Esner, meanwhile, went to Northeastern University after also spending a year with the Tornadoes. Both were good college players. Spina had 49 goals during his four-year career with the Eagles, which ended in 2005. Esner, more of a defensive forward, played four years at Northeastern, scoring 18 goals.

And both brought a taste of the pro game to this camp, despite never being drafted by a NHL team.

Esner graduated this spring and signed an amateur tryout with the Peoria Rivermen of the American Hockey League, seeing a dozen games at the end of the year. Spina has already played for four minor-league teams and has also attended training camp with the Washington Capitals. He has 26 goals in two AHL seasons.

While it remains to be seen if they did enough to earn contracts from the Coyotes, it is already clear enough that they have made quite the impression on their developmental camp teammates.

Blake Wheeler, one of those first-round picks at the camp, hails from the hockey hotbed of Minnesota. As such, he takes cold weather and abundant ice time for granted. Upon arriving in Phoenix for the first time, he was shocked at how warm it is in the desert and still marvels that anyone can find the motivation as kids to play hockey on a regular basis.

Consequently, he thinks the journey Esner and Spina have traveled to get to this point is one of the best hockey stories he has encountered in a while.

“I can’t even imagine what it would be like to find ice and everything that goes with it,” Wheeler said. “In the summers, it is 115. It’s just tough to go out there.

“I’ve been spoiled being from Minnesota and hockey is kind of the big sport around there and it is kind of a given that all your buddies are going to be hockey players. Those guys have been dedicated their whole life to stick with it and they are a couple of great players.”

In the end, that is the legacy that the two childhood friends hope they have left here this week. They don’t want to be remembered as good local hockey players. They want to be remembered simply as good hockey players who just happen to have grown up in Arizona.

”I expect to be the best player on the ice every second I am out there because I am in my backyard and because I have a little more experience than most of the players here,” Spina said. “I feel it should help me more than it should hurt me. I use it to inspire me.”

Just as future generations of Arizonan hockey players will likely use the stories of Dave Spina and Bryan Esner to help them chase their own hockey dreams.