Michael Kesselring puts his gear on left-side-first. Nick DeSimone does box breathing. Barrett Hayton eats the same meal for lunch every game day.
Each person in the Utah Hockey Club locker room seems to have a unique tendency in his pregame routine. Few call it superstition, but most believe that if they do anything differently, they won’t perform as well.
“I did it one day and played good,” Kesselring said of his routine, which is regimented by the minute on the clock.
It starts with a stationary bike ride for Kesselring. Next, he does five specific exercises before heading to the locker room to stretch. Once he’s finished, he gets dressed halfway, tapes his stick knob, ties his skates and then tapes his stick blade.
He also doesn’t nap before games. It shocked his locker room stall neighbor, Mikhail Sergachev, who overheard the interview. He does close his eyes for 30 minutes, but he refrains from deep sleep.
“If I play really well, I’ll wear the same suit to the (next) game,” he said. “If I don’t play well, I’ll switch something. If I didn’t wear a tie, I’ll wear a tie — little things like that.”
He doesn’t know if it’s superstition or routine, but he does know that he’s played well this season — and that’s what matters.
“If it helps your head, it helps,” he said.
Olli Määttä has a similar routine. He grabs coffee before preparing his sticks. Next, he gets the rest of his equipment ready and then does some mobility exercises. After doing what Kevin Stenlund claims is every stretch in existence (which Määttä denies), he attends his pregame meetings and then goes out for warmups.
Unlike Kesselring, Määttä doesn’t use the clock to know when to move on to the next activity. At some point over the course of his 822 NHL games, regular season and playoffs combined, he stopped having to think about what to do next.
Contrary to what one might assume from Liam O’Brien’s Viking-like appearance and rough-and-tumble playing style, his pregame routine is meant to keep him calm. He listens to relaxing music, stretches and does breath work.
Perhaps the longest routine in the room belongs to head coach André Tourigny.
He starts the day before the game, watching film of the upcoming opponent: specifically his team’s last game against that team and the opponent’s last game in general.
Next, he looks at all the stats — “too many” metrics, in his words. He lets the numbers marinate in his mind the rest of the day so that by the time he gets to his office the next morning, he can narrow them down into digestible chunks for his players.
Once he’s done, he’s ready for morning skate, followed by his pregame press conference with some good-looking reporters (my words, not his). Next, he cleans up the game plan and then heads home for a pregame nap.
He eventually returns to the rink, where he plans out his line matchups.
Of the eight individuals I asked about their pregame routines, the one with the least rigidity was the one with the fewest games under his belt: Josh Doan.
“I’m about as nonchalant as you could be before a game,” he said. “I try to dial it in right before warmups, and then in that intermission between warmups and the first period, kind of settle in fully.”
He doesn’t mind doing the same things before each game, but he doesn’t want to get to a level of superstition.
“It’s good to have routine, but in this world it’s too hard to have superstition because one thing can lead to another, then you might miss something and you’re in your head,” he said.