MONTREAL — Camille Gauthier-St-Germain is expected to pay rent for her Montreal apartment, located in the city's Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, at the beginning of every month. Her landlord occasionally comes in and does small renovations to the place, which isn’t uncommon behavior.
Gauthier-St-Germain doesn’t really know much about her landlord, who is otherwise known as “the hockey player” in the area.
“At the beginning I didn’t realize he was a former hockey player,” Gauthier-St-Germain said. “He doesn’t really talk about it. I don’t know if he even really wants to talk about it.”
The landlord is 28-year-old Angelo Esposito, a former Canadian hockey prodigy who doesn’t talk much about hockey anymore, so he says. As the 2018 IIHF World Junior Championship plays out in Buffalo, N.Y., the former first-round pick, who scored the game-winning goal for Team Canada in the 2009 gold medal game against Sweden, admits he hasn’t paid as much attention to the tournament as he did in the past.
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Once upon a time, Esposito was on his way to becoming a household name. In the present, he’s more into selling, renovating and renting homes.
“It’s a lot of fun, I enjoy it,” Esposito said in a recent interview with Sporting News. “I’m not looking just to have 100, 200 houses. As many as I can get is what I want. I think there’s endless opportunity in real estate.”
Esposito, whose family owns a small grocery chain in Montreal proper, said he now owns approximately 40 housing units, mostly in the city's Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, matching a goal of his for this year. Esposito bought his first building in 2015 before buying more in 2017. He had money saved from his hockey playing days, and credits his parents, specifically his dad, for having money saved for a rainy day.
“I remember at a young age my father used to take some of my paychecks and put them away,” Esposito said. “Trust me, I wanted to buy everything else in the world except for property. I could never thank him enough for doing that today.
“Coming from an Italian family, it was always about, Buy real estate, buy real estate.”
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Esposito works with a realtor and his brother, who just finished a finance degree at the University of Ottawa, on figuring out which properties will provide the biggest return on investment and have the highest potential.
“If someone’s already gone in (the property) and done renovations and it’s at its max,” Esposito said. “For me, it’s not worth buying because I know I can do that work for less and get more value out of it.”
When Esposito bought his first building in 2015, he wasn’t incognito. He was instantly recognized by his neighbors.
“One of the neighbors is always coming to talk to me about hockey and talking to me about when I played for the Remparts, when I got drafted,” Esposito said.
Of course, despite his celebrity status, he isn’t immune to late-paying tenants. But he says he’s willing to make arrangements to accommodate them.
“I think I’m very reasonable with my tenants,” Esposito said.
“I’ve been through a lot in life, hockey-wise and all. So I understand that life isn’t always easy for people,” he continued. “Everyone’s trying to work, everyone’s trying to make it. You have to be reasonable and if you’re trying to be a hardass it’s not always the best approach to take with people."
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Esposito’s hockey exploits are well documented. As are his failures.
He was once expected to be the hockey player, from his teens. He enrolled and played at the famous Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Faribault, Minn., as Sidney Crosby and Zach Parise did before him. He was drawing comparisons to Montreal Canadiens legend Guy Lafleur before the Pittsburgh Penguins drafted him in the first round in 2007.
Esposito was famously cut three times by Team Canada in advance of the world juniors, before finally making the team and winning gold in 2009 with a who's who list of teammates such as John Tavares, P.K. Subban and Jamie Benn.
However, injuries slowed his development and he soon went from budding hockey talent to professional hockey journeyman. Since his NHL draft year in 2007, he had played almost everywhere else but: the American Hockey League, the ECHL, the SM-liiga in Finland, as well as leagues in Italy, Austria, and the Czech Republic.
Esposito’s injury list runs long. He’s torn his ACL, twice, as well as his MCL, a hip labrum, and a hamstring. There’s a broken hand in his medical history, too. He says injuries slowed his speed, his abilities, and, ultimately, his confidence.
“You name it, it’s probably happened to me,” Esposito said.
The former phenom says he also suffered four concussions in his career, the last of which came during a nine-game stint with HC Ceske Budejovice of the Czech 1 Liga, a second-tier league in the Czech Republic.
As Esposito tries to recollect, he was skating up-ice before an opposing player came from behind and caught him with an elbow to his jaw. Esposito’s teammates told him he didn’t fall, but kept playing instead.
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“It’s kind of blurry,” he said. “I was going to the hospital and I kept looking back at my girlfriend and asking her ‘So? How did I play? How did I play?’ I don’t really remember asking that and I think that was scary for me.”
Esposito adds that he suffered daily migraines for months as a result of the concussion before returning to Montreal to visit a specialist, and says his condition has improved since.
“At the point I was in my career, I was 27, I said it’s time for me to move on and figure out what I want to do in life,” he said.
Real estate is Esposito’s priority, but it doesn’t mean he’s completely gone away from the game of hockey. He spends time as a skill development coach for his alma mater, Selwyn House High School in Montreal and occasionally plays for a recreational team in the city.
Esposito seems at peace with the new chapter in his life.
“It is a disappointment that I never played in the NHL and I have to live with that for the rest of my life,” Esposito said. “But if I keep looking back and pondering upon it then I’m going to be miserable my whole life. I learned to move forward, at 28 years old there’s so much more in life than just hockey.”