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Alarie lives in River Park South and admits he’ s“ a long way from school.” However, his parents or a teammate’ s parents drive him the 25 minutes to Shaftesbury every morning and then he gets on the bus and drives all the way back Southdale to practice. That’ s much closer to home.
“ When we’ re at The Rink training, it takes a lot of time,” he said laughing,“ but here at Southdale, it’ s pretty close.”
Alarie is a typical elite Manitoba hockey player, inasmuch as his development checks all the regular boxes.
“ I started skating at two at public skating at Dakota and Jonathan Toews Arena and then I started playing hockey at four,” he said.“ At four, I was playing with five and sixyear-olds at Dakota. I played all my minor hockey with the Dakota Lazers and then I played two years with the St. Vital Victorias and then one
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year after that with the minor bantam Warriors.”
French is Alarie’ s first language and he admits that while school can be a challenge at times, he’ s getting used to it. He has an older brother, 18, who also played with the Warriors and then played a year of high school hockey and a 12-year-old sister.
He has also decided that he’ d rather pursue the WHL route to his hockey dreams as opposed to the US or Canadian college route.
“ The Western League has always been my goal,” he said.“ Since I’ ve been young, I’ ve listened to my dad( Richard) tell me about his heroes playing in the WHL and I’ ve always wanted to play there.”
Although he’ s a tremendous scorer, he likes to think of himself as a playmaker first.
“ I like to make the play that has the best chance to score,” he explained.“ I would
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EVERYONE IS
DEFINITELY GOING
TO KNOW ABOUT
HIM, HE’ S A BIG BODY
AND HE’ S TOUGH TO
PLAY AGAINST
call myself a playmaker. I can shoot, but I try to get the puck to my teammate with a better chance.”
Coach Purdie is thrilled to have Alarie at RHA this season. After all, the coach knows that this year’ s team is still not at the level that last year’ s team reached. But there is still plenty of time to get things together.
“ Eric wanted to come and play RHA last year, but he’ s from South St. Vital and the schooling situation didn’ t work out,” Purdie said.“ We’ re really glad to have him this year because we’ ll have a
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little bit different team. We don’ t have that Seth Jarvis score that we had last. Seth is a player that doesn’ t come along that often. I think we’ ll be a scoring-by-committee team but I also think we’ ll have more scoring from a team standpoint. I think we’ ll spread it out more as opposed to relying on one or two guys. I like our D-corps and I like our goalies. For me, I have to get away from comparing our team where it was at the end of last year compared to where it is right now. We have a lot of work, but come March, I think we’ ll be OK.
And come May, Eric Alarie should be high WHL pick. His dreams aren’ t that far away.“ Everyone is definitely going to know about him,” said Purdie.“ He’ s a big body and he’ s tough to play against. His name will be circled by opposing coaches. Eric Alarie is a very good player.” ❍
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114 | GAME ON | NOVEMBER 2017 |