(Broad Leaf Media/Facebook)

By Ben Tompkins

From little kids to the biggest stage

Family affair: Will Munro playing for a national championship with family and friends

May 18, 2025 | 3:14 PM

For Will Munro, Sunday night in Calgary will be the moment of a lifetime for two reasons.

One, he’ll be playing for a Canadian Junior A Gold Medal, and two, he’ll be doing it alongside his lifelong best friend and his cousin.

Munro and teammate Bo Eisner are both natives of Swan River, Man., as they grew up together as childhood best friends.

Meanwhile, teammate Ashton Paul, a native of nearby The Pas, Man., is also his cousin, as they have spent many times together, while also battling it out on the ice.

“It’s pretty surreal, growing up with those guys playing hockey together, Ashton was from The Pas, so I had to travel to play him, but just the laughs along the way, when I heard I was gonna get the chance to play with Bo and Ashton on the same team, I was pretty excited, because I’ve never had the opportunity to play with Ashton and Bo, and I always wished that I would get that opportunity,” Munro told northeastNOW.

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“Right now, I’m just kind of living it up because it is pretty surreal. All the support coming from Swan River and from my extended family, they’re all here repping the Mustang logo, so it’s pretty awesome to see… just looking back at all the memories when we grow older together, and just seeing how much we accomplished together as a group, it’s gonna be pretty awesome to see.”

To begin the year, it was just Eisner on the Melfort squad, but as time went on, the pieces started to come together.

Munro made his debut on November 13th against the Estevan Bruins. Paul then made his debut with the Blue and Green less than a month later, on December 6th against the La Ronge Ice Wolves.

Will Munro and Ashton Paul (submitted/Will Munro)

“Bo definitely played some part in why I came to Melfort. I just wanted to play with Bo growing up, and when I had that opportunity to come here, Bo boasted a lot about the Mustangs, so I thought it’d be pretty awesome for my dad and my family to come and have familiar faces in the stands to watch the game with. It was pretty awesome driving all those hours with Bo when we were kids, and now we’re getting to do it again to close out our careers,” added Munro.

“I played Pauly in a preseason game when we were in the MJHL, and we had 40 or 50 family members at that game. It was pretty cool, so I thought that at one point in my career, I wanted to do one last thing with him, as a cousin and a best friend. When I learned I was gonna get the opportunity to play with him, I was grateful to Blevins and the team for making it happen… now we have our entire families here watching us do something special.”

Normally, you become lifelong friends and treat one another like family (brothers) as you play with one another. For Munro, Eisner, and Paul, they were already that, and then became teammates.

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Ben.Tompkins@pattisonmedia.com

On X @BenTompkins_8