YORKTON - In the world of sports you don’t have to be a superstar to have a good story to tell.
Take George Pesut, a hockey player who was born in Saskatchewan, playing his earliest hockey at Laird.
Pesut was a pretty good player in his youth. He was drafted by St. Louis Blues in the second round #24 overall in the 1973 NHL Amateur Draft. Note that would put him easy first round these days. He was also drafted by the Cleveland Crusaders, again in the second round #24 overall in the 1973 WHA Amateur Draft.
That was back when I was a mere 13, and while I was cutting my personal teeth as a hockey fan, Pesut never caught my attention.
Of course he played only 92 games in the NHL, all with the now long-defunct California Seals and 17 with the long gone Calgary Cowboys of the WHA, not exactly a top-pro career to write about.
Yet, Pesut sat down and penned The Fourth Period – Between the Ice Sheets: Hockey On Two Continents, a book that dials in at more than 500 pages. That is a hefty tome, but Pesut has a career that made him something of a hockey gypsy outside the top pro leagues.
Pesut’s hockey career ranged from Saskatoon, Flin Flon and Victoria – all in the WCHL, to Denver, Richmond, Salt Lake City, Tidewater, Erie, Wichita, Hamburg, Berlin, Iserlohn, Bayreuth, Nuremburg and the list goes on, and on.
Suddenly you can see where a book might have percolated in Pesut’s mind.
“I think it (the book) was always there – sort of on the bucket list,” he told Yorkton This Week, adding it was something he just never got around too until recently. “. . . When you’re young you sort of think life never ends.”
When Pesut finally retired the idea of the book resurfaced and he finally took on the challenge.
“I sat down and wrote about 100 pages the first week,” he said, although ultimately it was a project which took more than three years to complete.
The story flowed, and as a self-published effort Pesut said he just told the story as he wanted without worry of a publisher imposing limits.
“I think I’ve put in a fairly broad amount of stories,” he said.
So with a hockey passport plastered with destinations – he said there were 26 teams, where does Pesut remember most fondly.
“I really enjoyed my time in Oakland. It was a fun place to play as a Canadian kid,” he said.
While the Seals ultimately failed – they lasted eight years, Pesut said he believes had a new arena been built, the team could have thrived, even with their garish green and yellow jerseys something he said had the Seals “sort of ahead of the times in the NHL.”
Berlin also drew praise. Pesut said he played there for five seasons – his longest stop in a career spanning some 20 years.
All-in-all such a career, that willingness to head down the road in pursuit of one more opportunity to play, creates many memories, and that is what Pesut shares here. Now for some the page count might be a bit daunting for a player most will not likely recall, but therein lies the book’s strength – the story of a guy loving the sport and going wherever it took him to play the game.
