Time is growing short. There are mere days before the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings will take the ice in the 2017 Scotiabank NHL Centennial Classic at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto on Sunday (3 p.m. ET; NBCSN, SN, TVA Sports) and before the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks do the same in the 2017 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic at Busch Stadium in St. Louis on Monday (1 p.m. ET; NBCSN, SN, TVA Sports). It is at this moment, with the games fast approaching, that all that has been built comes to the fore. The bonds. The idea of team. The connections.
"The game is at the center of all of these connections," narrator Bill Camp said in the introduction to the third episode of "EPIX Presents Road to the NHL Outdoor Classics," which debuted Friday. "It has been for the last century."
Bonds made by game key in third part of EPIX series
Connections created by teammates at rink, beach part of building team
Those connections stretch from the ones on the ice, from the tape-to-tape passes that make the game work, to those formed in the dressing room, on the team plane, on the road, in the home. They are strengthened from training camp to opening night to the push of the regular season. And in the most challenging moments they are what teams rely on, what make them solid and formidable.
That might be especially true for the Maple Leafs, a team that includes more than the typical number of rookies playing big roles. That means there are a number of players still adapting to life in the National Hockey League, including the road trips, the back-to-back games and the ups and downs of an 82-game schedule.
Not that coach Mike Babcock has a lot of empathy.
"It's not difficult," Babcock says. "There's no difficult in it. Just think about it: You get to stay in nice hotels, eat nice meals, and all you've got to do is come out and play hard. I don't see the difficulty at all."
He then adds, "Guys that are mentally tough and bring it every day, they play good every day. And if you're not, it's harder for you."
But rest is helpful too, as we see when the Red Wings get a day off in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and take advantage of the time for a day of football on the sand. "Frenchies against English," as they put it. The group of four, Andreas Athanasiou, Anthony Mantha, Xavier Ouellet and Ryan Sproul, have known each other for a long time, first as teammates with Grand Rapids, the Red Wings' American Hockey League affiliate, before reaching the NHL.
It's a bond that continues to bear fruit at the NHL level, whether on the beach or the ice.
And we see it do that, when the Red Wings pick up a needed victory against the Florida Panthers, and when the Blues try to turn around a tough December stretch with a win against the Tampa Bay Lightning before heading into the Christmas break.
To get there they must overcome the bumps and bruises sustained during the first three months of the regular season. It's something that veteran forwards Ryan Reaves and Scottie Upshall know, something that we see the Blues take on, because they must.
There are lighter moments here as well, with Reaves donning a full Santa Claus suit and delivering Red Bulls to his teammates, a pick-me-up for the final game before the break.
"To all the naughty boys," he says. "Which is our whole team."
He strolls in, with a bag over his shoulder.
"Ho ho ho," he yells out. "Who the [expletive] wants a Red Bull?"
The caffeine doesn't quite help, though, and the Blues head into the break after a 5-2 loss to the Lightning. There is disappointment, and there is a long plane ride ahead.
There are other connections ahead too, as we see Blackhawks rookie forward Vinnie Hinostroza heading home to Bartlett, Illinois. It's a quick ride for him, less than an hour, and a trip that even allows for a basket full of laundry. We see a room unchanged from when Hinostroza still inhabited it, complete with medals, trophies and Blackhawks paraphernalia, including a scrap of paper with an autograph from now-teammate Jonathan Toews.
To another city, as Maple Leafs rookie Auston Matthews heads back to Arizona for the first time to play against the team he grew up rooting for, the Arizona Coyotes, against the player he grew up idolizing, Coyotes captain Shane Doan, in a return to a place that was, and is, his home.
"It's going to be pretty special to play at home," Matthews says. "This is where I grew up, this is where I live. It's definitely special coming back here and playing the team you grew up watching."
We see a nervous mother, a proud father, a sense of expectations for a teammate and a player. As Babcock says, "Tonight should be fun. Let's be energized, ready to go. But let's [expletive] make sure [Matthews] is proud of how hard we play, how organized we are, the kind of commitment we have. That's the most important thing. Let's play [expletive] hard, good things will happen."
That's the message. Use the connections, build on them, embrace them. And with that, those connections, those bonds, those relationships -- family, team, hometown -- will endure, all the way to the Centennial Classic, to the Winter Classic, and beyond.
