Like many hockey players, one of my favorite hobbies away from the rink is golf. Sometimes I golf (relatively) well (for me), and sometimes I play terribly, but there’s no predicting how I’m going to play on a given day, and it doesn’t seem like anything I do prior to a round correlates with my performance.

If I get to the course in time to hit some warm-up balls on the driving range and some practice putts, I sometimes play better on the course. But sometimes I do those things and then play horribly on the course. And sometimes I show up early and hit terrible shots on the range that make me think it’s going to be a long day, but then I get out on the first hole and stripe it down the middle and play great. Sometimes the opposite happens. Sometimes I don’t warm up at all and play well, and sometimes not. I have no idea how to explain this, but that’s golf.

As I spoke with Kraken players about their gameday routines, I picked up some similar themes. Everyone I spoke with seems to like morning skates, but practicing on the day of the game doesn’t always lead to peak performance in the game, and opting out of skating doesn’t always lead to a poor showing later that night. Of course, every player wants to be at his best every night, but I was surprised to hear that the players are less rigid in their preparations than I would have expected.

“I’m back and forth on it,” Kraken center Matty Beniers said of morning skate. “Sometimes I won’t [skate], sometimes I will, and I don’t know if I see a huge correlation when I do and don’t. I just think it’s more about doing something in the morning, getting a little sweat, feeling good.”

Not every gameday is created equal, and while every player has at least a loose routine, they do have to adjust and adapt with the schedule. There are back-to-backs, which means the team will not hold any kind of morning skate the following day. There are practice days, travel days, mandatory days off, and quite often, depending on how hard the coach thinks his players have been grinding, optional skates.

“I think it’s kind of an art balancing the season out, knowing when guys need to rest, when guys need to skate,” defenseman Jamie Oleksiak said. “Especially if you have a day off beforehand, or something, you’re a little stiff, maybe it’s nice to get out there and loosen up.”

What are morning skates for?

Philadelphia Flyers coach John Tortorella once famously quipped that morning skates are just for the media to see the lineup and talk to players. But the prevailing theory is that morning skates do serve a purpose for player preparation as well.

Thinking about it in your own life, if you get up in the morning and immediately get moving and do some form of exercise, do you feel like you have more energy throughout the day compared to if you lie around for much of the day? Again, speaking from my own experience, I know that if I’m static for most of the day and then try to go out for a run late in the day, my performance is far worse than if I’m moving around throughout or even working out in the morning. NHL players’ bodies work in that way too.

“I like morning skate. You just get some touches, I get to do draws, you get to feel the puck a little bit, get a little sweat in,” Beniers said. “I think it’s good to do something before the game in the morning, whether it’s a stretch, a small workout, a pre-game skate, you’ve got to kind of do something just to get your body ready.”

And while coach Dan Bylsma will sometimes require players to skate, especially if the team was off on the day before a game, he relies on them to do what is necessary to prepare themselves.

 “Whether it’s morning skate or whether we’re not [having] morning skate, whether it’s optional or not, it’s just, ‘Get what you need to be prepared to play and battle in the next game,’” Bylsma said. “Everything about this morning is about getting ready to be your best in tonight’s game.”

Routines vary after the skate

When the Kraken are at home, they typically skate at 10 a.m. at Kraken Community Iceplex. They have run-throughs and meetings, and then the players go home, where they spend several hours before heading to Climate Pledge Arena to get into game mode.

The road schedule is a bit different. Assuming there is a scheduled skate, the road team usually gets on the ice later, around 11:30 a.m. local time. So, there’s a shorter period for players to kill before the game, and this time is spent at the team hotel, rather than in the comfort of their own homes.

How they spend the time varies from player to player, although I again picked up some similarities. For example, naps are common, as is a “pre-game meal,” and perhaps a dip in the cold tub.  

“I’m going to have pre-game meal, then go home, nap, then wake up, shower, get dressed, coffee, and then head to the rink,” Yanni Gourde said. “And then my routine at the rink is just taping my stick, getting warmed up, and then playing sewer ball, then ready for the game.”

Oleksiak has a similar process. “It depends on the day to day, generally, with our schedules,” he said. “It really depends on how the body’s feeling that day. Usually it’s pre-game meal, typically the same thing, and then I might grab a nap.”

Oleksiak also said he keeps the game in his mind, but he tries not to “dwell too much” on it.

“[You don’t want to] work yourself into anxiety or overthink things, but you obviously kind of stay mentally ready.”

Hockey players love napping

There’s a lot of science surrounding the perfect nap length. A 30-minute nap can be refreshing, while a 60-minute nap (just short of a 90-minute REM cycle) can leave you feeling groggy.

Interestingly, the Kraken players don’t seem to worry about how much they sleep (this can also end up being a stressor if you struggle to fall asleep and know you’re nearing your wake-up time), but they do all try to get a little bit of a nap in on gameday.

“Depends on the day,” Beniers said. “For me, it’s almost like, ‘Just rest before the game as much as you can,’ I guess. But sometimes I’ll go shorter. On back-to-backs, I’ll go longer, but usually I kind of just let my body decide that.

“Say I’m leaving for the game at like four o’clock, I’ll set my alarm for 3:30 and get in bed around like 1:30,” Beniers said. “If I go two hours, I go two hours. If I go one hour, I go an hour, and I get up.”

The goalie approach to gameday is different

The goalie position is unique in hockey in a lot of ways. The gameday routine is also slightly different in that a netminder has to be laser-focused and ready to track a puck that’s traveling upwards of 100 miles per hour through screens and deflecting off sticks and bodies.

Some of the preparation is physical, but some of it is also mental and visual. Both Kraken goalies, Philipp Grubauer and Joey Daccord, said they see value in morning skates in helping them to prepare for game action.

“What I’m trying to accomplish is seeing the puck, tracking the puck, and just getting your body moving,” Grubauer said. “Sometimes, if you don’t skate the day before, you work on what the other team would be doing, power play setup, or like if they’re always trying to find a trailer, different types of plays.”

Daccord believes the time spent at the rink on gameday is crucial, but he didn’t always feel that way.

“My opinion on morning skate is always evolving,” Daccord said. “I think it’s changed over the years. As of right now, I love it, I think it’s really important. I find I’m much sharper in the game, just from right away, you see the puck better, feel a little more clean, your gear feels a little more comfortable.

“A couple years ago, I didn’t even want to skate at all. I just wanted to rest and save my energy for the game. But I found that, actually—over time and just kind of going through it, which is where experience kicks in—I just felt like I had more energy if I got a sweat in the morning.”

How the goalie performs at the skate or even in warmups is in line with the driving range analogy from earlier.

“[How I perform at morning skate] doesn’t matter, necessarily,” Daccord said. “Sure, you’d love to stop every puck, but it’s kind of unrealistic. You’re going to have some days when the puck goes in more than others at morning skate, and you can’t really let it… you have to just clear that mental hurdle. Even in game, sometimes you have warmups where you stop everything, and then you’re terrible in the game. Or, you make no saves—last year at the Winter Classic, I don’t think I saved one puck the entire warmups.”

We all know how the Winter Classic went for Daccord.

Does everybody love morning skate? Maybe not, but getting up and moving and feeling the puck, for both players and goalies, is an important part of the routine. It doesn’t guarantee success in the game, but the players seem to agree that it does give them a better chance to perform.