My Story: The Rituals of Warm-Ups in the NHL

You've probably watched enough hockey games to have a complete picture of what goes on during the 60 minutes of game action, but allow me to let you in on some of my routines before faceoff.
I'm willing to bet you've never noticed all the tiny rituals and habits every player has in warm-ups before every single game. From passing to the same players in a specific order to always buckling a helmet strap at the same time, there are a lot of intricacies that can be missed.
So without further ado, here are three things I have to do before every game:

Italian for Lunch:
The first required element of my game day afternoon, following morning skate and meetings, is Italian cuisine for lunch. Before every home game, I go to Amerigo and order pasta Bolognese, a tomato and ground beef sauce.
This has been my pregame meal for such a long time, that even on the road I eat the same thing. We usually eat lunch at the team hotel, and I get pasta and meat sauce from the buffet. Now this next part may seem a little weird, but I also have a side of cucumbers and tomatoes that I dump into the pasta and stir it up.
So now that I think about it, I eat pasta and meat sauce at least 82 times a year, but I'm not tired of it yet. It's a delicious meal, and the carbs get you fueled for the game that night.
I usually eat lunch around noon or 1 p.m. so that I can settle in for a nap, have a small snack after I wake up and then eat dinner after the game to refuel.

Pregame Snooze:
Most hockey players try to take a nap in the afternoon before a game to reset, refresh and catch some energy prior to the start of the game. When you're exercising and pushing your body from 6 to 10 p.m. at night, I've found a nap is the best way to restart the clock on a day.
Even before I came over to the United States to play in the AHL and NHL, I napped before games in various Swedish leagues too. In the middle of the afternoon, I always try to get at least 15 minutes of sleep, with an hour being my average. If it's the second half of a back-to-back set of games, sometimes that hour can stretch into two. Some guys will watch TV or just kind of relax, but I've found it's best for me to set my alarm for 3:30 p.m. - because that's the latest I can start getting ready to go to the rink - and focus on falling asleep.
On the road, we have two buses that leave for the rink 30 minutes apart, and I usually go on the later one so that I can spend some more time refocusing and napping before the game.
Finding time to let my body and mind rest between games is one of the most important habits I've developed during my years in the NHL. I think one of the hardest things to adjust to in the NHL is its 82-game season, with virtually every day spent practicing, traveling and playing games. For example, the NHL plays 20 to 30 more games than I did while I was in Sweden.
Just to show you how much hockey we cram into a game day: Our bus leaves the hotel in the mid-morning, we log our morning skate and then we usually have special teams or video meetings until the early afternoon, so I try to find a couple hours to reset before we head back to the arena in the late afternoon and start to warm up and prepare for the game to start.

My Friend Alice & Rituals in Warm-ups:
I'm only going to generally describe my routines in warm-ups for home games because I'm afraid we'd be here all day if I went into too much detail.
First off, I'm different than the other guys because my role in warm-ups is to be the puck collector and passer for all the different parts. In a sense, I play quarterback for warm-ups.
I skate out from the Lexus Lounge in second place behind our starting goalie. I take a few laps, taking shots at the open net, continuing to get faster as I go.
We hit the ice for a 16-minute warmup, and with around 13 minutes left, the real fun begins. I buckle my helmet, collect all the pucks into the net and separate them into three sections. From there, I pass them in the three groups to the left, middle and right, in bunches of two of three pucks, always ending with two. Then I fist bump Peks or Juice and get out of the way.
I got this job full time when David Legwand was traded to Detroit in 2014. It had always been his responsibility, but when he missed a couple games during the 2013-14 season, I was told, "Hey rookie, go take care of the pucks." So when Leggy went to the Red Wings later in the year, it became my main job in warm-ups.
Let me make another aside here to explain how my role in warm-ups is unique. Yes, I have a pattern for most of the things I need to accomplish, but since most of the guys are relying on me to collect the pucks and then send them out in groups or choose who to pass to, if I'm a tiny bit off in my timing or pattern I'm going to hear about it.

OK, back to passing the pucks. That happens four different times, with each of them serving a specific purpose. The first time is three groups of pucks, then two for 2-on-1s, then one big group at the top of the crease for line rushes. I'll get to the fourth group in a second. Every grouping and passing of the pucks has a larger purpose, with most of the guys having smaller things they like to do to help themselves warm up. For example, P.K. always takes the first puck of the first middle group, flips it up into the air and juggles with it while I'm passing out the rest of the pucks toward the guys catching them behind the blue line.
Each time before collecting the pucks, I wave at my friend, Alice, in the stands. She's always standing on the glass with her parents to the right of the net, and I always get a fist bump and flip backhanders at her. It came about really naturally, but I've gotten to watch her grow up during the past three seasons. She turns six this year, and at this point, I can't imagine going through warm-ups without her.
After I collect the pucks for a fourth time and backhand 10 or so of them at Alice, the guys have formed an umbrella-type shape near the blue line. I pass one of them the puck and they take a one-on-one shot with either Pekka or Juuse. If a goal is scored I get a new puck from the corner, otherwise I skate around collecting the puck and picking out the next player to shoot.

I have a set pattern for the order, with Craig Smith always going first and Mike Fisher going second and P.K. Subban third. I won't list them all, but the main factor is letting the veterans go first. If Juice is in net, he likes to face more shots, so we may loop around in the order until he's comfortable.
Toward the end of the drill, Filip Forsberg takes over for me as the passer while I go grab a drink of water from the bench and chat with one of our athletic trainers, DJ Amadio.
I told you this could get complicated, didn't I?
Ryan Ellis gets a shot earlier in the rotation, but he is also the one who ends it by flipping the puck toward the net before all of us try to score a single puck on the backup goalie for the night. Remember when I said I'd hear about it if my timing was off? Let's just say Elly may be one of those players.
Finally, I always exit the ice and walk down the tunnel to the locker room right as the buzzer sounds and the clock hits 0:00. You've probably noticed players like P.K. who have to make sure they're the last off the ice or something like that. I don't care about the order as much as I want to be hopping through the bench door and heading to the room at the buzzer.

Game Time:
Roughly 20 minutes later, we come out from the locker room one more time, and I'm second in line again behind either Peks or Juice. I always take one big loop and then cut back in front of the Pred Head and hit a gap in the line after Roman Josi and Scott Hartnell (or another veteran).
After the national anthem, we drop the puck on another game.
But I'm getting into a whole other story now, so let's save that for another day...