FEATURE: Palmieri is Cooking and Constructing During the Pause

Kyle Palmieri knows where the Devils stood in the standings at the moment the NHL paused their season.

But it doesn't matter that the team is 13 points out of a Wild Card playoff spot, there is still a craving to finish the season, whenever that may be.

"I think just having some closure on the season," Palmieri said, answering questions from Devils Red and Black members. "Obviously, as you get to the end of the season, you start having a little more fun and finding ways that you kind of cherish the time with your teammates a little more just because you know you're headed into the summer. A lot of your teammates, you don't get the chance to see over the summer, so you get to spend some quality time with them."

Now socially isolated away from his teammates, Palmieri is using his time to best serve the team when if and when the pause is lifted. There's no ice to practice on just yet, so he has chosen to explore other avenues to help improve his game. It started with renovating the garage at his Long Island home, making it a functional gym.

"The garage was big," Kyle said. "We had a lot… We did a lot of construction. So, it was kind of a mess. And now it's a fully functioning gym with a little workshop area and everything's a little more organized."

What is harder, and something echoed by all hockey players, is not having access to the ice.

"Actually, for a while I didn't have any hockey equipment to use," Kyle admitted. "I was able to acquire a stick and a pair of gloves that were floating around the house. You go out and you stick handle a little bit and things like that."

It's a way of at least keeping relatively sharp, though nothing will feel like returning to an ice surface. So much like Palmieri is creative on the ice, he got creative off of it as well, allowing himself to dig into other aspects of the game and performance that he may not have had the same type of time to concentrate in the course of a regular season and off-season.

"One of the things that's becoming more prevalent is breath control," he shared, "which is something that I've looked into. It's like breathing habits and meditation, things like that is all things that might be a little thing and it might sound a little crazy to some people, but it's something that I've been trying to kind of take place and make it part of my daily routine and in finding time to do exercises and things like that, that'll help you with that.

Palmieri, his wife Ashlee and his father Bruce are all at the home on Long Island where Kyle and Ashlee spend their summers. For the most part, they've kept busy with renovations and have their hands full with their two dogs, Penny and Piper.

"The two dogs are keeping us busy out here," he laughed. "They're loving having a yard and not being cooped up in the apartment. So that's, that's been good. And yeah, everyone's good, staying healthy and staying busy."

It's not just Kyle, Ashlee, and Bruce staying busy. The rest of his family, who remained in New Jersey are perhaps even more occupied.

The rest of family is working at the family farm. His mother Tammy, his sisters and brothers have been busy serving the community. They run DePiero's Farm Stand in Montvale and open every morning at 7am. They have curbside pickup of fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs and milk among other produce, and have a greenhouse as well.

"The smaller curbside pickup and farmers market options have been big," Palmieri said. "They've been super busy. They've been working around the clock and trying to fulfill orders and making sure people have what they need to feed their families."

Kyle has kept busy with his love for cooking as well, never having once served the same meal twice, he said with pride. He's also, much like many of us, entered into the sourdough world.

"I mean we've been all over the place," he said. "I don't think we've repeated a meal once. I do really enjoy cooking. But it's actually nice here at my house I spend most of my summer at, we have the grills which we don't have in Hoboken. So, I have a grill and a smoker, doing things on that is pretty fun. But I also dove into the sourdough world. I had the starter and everything. [It was] trial and error. Well, we'll get there. But baking I've never really baked before and I took up sourdough baking, just to experiment a little bit, but we'll get there."