As NHL gets faster, players adjust offseason training to keep up
Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara is 40 and yet his goalie Tuukka Rask swears he has improved his skating over the past couple of seasons.
Anaheim Ducks star Ryan Getzlaf insists he’s a more efficient skater and has a better understanding what he needs to do to “keep up.”
New Jersey Devils right wing Taylor Hall, already considered one of the NHL’s fastest players, spent the summer working to improve his skating.
“I moved to Toronto in an effort to get on the ice earlier than I usually do,” Hall told Paste BN Sports. “I started in June, so I got a two-month head start.”
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Increasingly, intense offseason work habits are central to players’ efforts to deal with the reality that the NHL is gaining speed by the minute.
“It’s a 12-month job now,” Colorado Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon said.
Rask joked that he thinks Chara has a competition going with Jaromir Jagr, 45, about who is going to play longer.
Rask finds it "amazing" that Chara can improve as a skater at his age. "It just goes to show you what his work ethic is," Rask said. "He's always the hardest-working guy no matter where he is."
Hall says he has improved his by working on power skating this summer.
“In a straight line, there’s not too many guys faster than me in the league,” Hall said. “But I wanted to be better crossing over, coming out of turns more powerfully. I think I did that. If you can get that one percent edge, why not?”
Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby skated with prospects before they headed to a rookie tournament this summer and he was struck that all of them were exceptional skaters.
“It’s one thing to be able to make plays,” Crosby said. “But if you can’t get the separation, or create time, to make the play you won’t get many opportunities. And you can see the league getting faster.”
The game has always been fast, says Getzlaf, but the difference today are the tricks players can perform at top speed.
"There used to be a lot of guys who could fly down the wing and shoot the puck,” Getzlaf said. “Now the same guys are spinning around in circles when they are doing that.”
Getzlaf joked that the first step to improving your skating is “admitting” you need to do it.
St. Louis Blues star Vladimir Tarasenko also worked on his skating this summer because “if you can’t skate it’s hard to play right now.” But he incorporates other training objectives into his skating drills to make it less monotonous.
“Skating drills are boring,” Tarasenko said. “If you don’t put a shot at the end of a skating drill, you can’t believe how boring it is when you go across the blue line, red lines, turns.”
Players of all ages are trying pick up speed. Buffalo Sabres star Jack Eichel, 20, spent much of his summer working on his skating and shooting.
“I wanted to get faster, more explosive, in smaller areas,” Eichel said, noting that he also worked on a quicker release on his shot.
It isn’t just about speed. Players are trying to improve at every aspect of the game. Minnesota Wild center Charlie Coyle employs a skating coach, a shooting coach and orders many of his meals from a company that prepares them according to his nutritional needs.
“If you sit back all summer you will be left behind,” Coyle said.
This is not the days of old when pro athletes would add a few pounds in the offseason. Today, athletes only gain in the offseason if they are trying to add more muscle mass.
Coyle said players are becoming too fast and big for the size of the rink.
“They are going to have to make the ice bigger down the road,” Coyle said.