The Conditioning Stint: Does it make sense for elite NHL players?

Dave McCarthy

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The Conditioning Stint: Does it make sense for elite NHL players? image

It’s not often that you see a veteran of 830 NHL games over 12 consecutive seasons set foot on an AHL ice surface. It's even rarer when it’s a player the calibre of Zach Parise. But that is the scenario Parise found himself in on Thursday when he suited up for the Iowa Wild at the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa.

Parise’s first AHL appearance since he played 73 games for the Albany River Rats in 2004-05 prior to beginning his NHL career was not due to poor performance, however. It was for a conditioning stint as he works his way back from a microdiscectomy procedure on Oct. 24 after a bad back forced him to undergo surgery.

It raises the question why conditioning stints are not used more often in the NHL with elite-level players, and could there be some value in getting into a game at the minor league level before returning to the NHL lineup?

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Matt Nichol, the creator of BioSteel and a Toronto-based trainer who works with athletes across all sports including the NHL, thinks so.

“If you told me (Zach Parise) was going to go down and play 25 minutes in Iowa in back-to-back games, then I wouldn’t bother,” said Nichol. “What’s the point? He might as well play in the NHL. For me, the real advantage is going down, playing limited minutes and then take a day off and determine how you’re feeling.”

In Parise’s case, he picked up one assist in 15:26 (about two fewer minutes than his average amount per game last season in Minnesota) in a 6-3 loss to the Rockford IceHogs. He did not accompany the team to Rockford for the rematch on Friday and instead drove back to Minnesota.

There are a multitude of factors that need to be assessed on a case by case basis when determining if a conditioning stint could benefit a player.

Firstly, if the player requires waivers to be sent to the AHL, the player himself needs to agree to the conditioning stint. Like anything in life, there is an element of ego involved when it comes to appearing in a minor league game – even if it is clear that it is purely to take a test run when coming off an injury. Some players just don’t want to go down. In Parise’s case, given the nature of his injury, it seemed prudent to let him see how it responded to game activity and that’s how he saw it.

“These guys have to get ready to play games, and when I’m not on a line, it’s tough to get reps,” Parise told Dane Mizutani of TwinCities.com on Thursday. “So, I think this would probably be the best thing, to go there, practice with (Iowa), play a game, and go from there.”

Acknowledging he has missed nearly the entire first half of the season, Parise said he knew he was well behind when it came to being in “game shape.”

“It’s been a long time and these guys have been playing 30 to 35 games so they’re that much further (along) than me conditioning-wise,” Parise told Mizutani. “I’ve got to get in game shape and try knock some of that rust off.”

Game shape. It’s a term that gets thrown around but what does it really mean?

Often times, players working their way back from injury will stay after practice and go through intense skating drills to build conditioning back up but Nichol said he does not feel that is the best course of action when it comes to getting back to “game shape.”

Why? Well, when you think about it, what does that have to do with what a player actually does during a game? Not much, really. Game shape is all about replicating what a player actually does during a game.

“Every single player will tell you, there’s nothing they do off-ice, doesn’t matter what it is, there’s just nothing like actually playing hockey, there’s nothing that replicates that,” said Nichol. “Hockey is a small series of really short explosive bursts interspersed with a whole lot of nothing, gliding or standing around. Skating laps and going from line to line and back, its good general conditioning, there’s nothing wrong with it, it has its place but it’s general fitness. When you’re at that last phase of rehab where it’s ‘return to play’, that doesn’t replicate a game at all.”

In other words, while it may help the player’s general conditioning level when it comes to endurance, it does not do much for that player’s explosive ability. How many times do you hear a player who has recently returned to the lineup from a longer absence say, “I feel okay but the legs felt a little heavy, I’m just trying to find my legs”?

Nichol said he is not against intense skating to build up conditioning but that replicating an environment as close to a game as possible is critical in the final stages of rehab.

“That’s okay early on in the rehab but in the last phase of ‘return to play’, that’s not good enough because that’s not what is going to happen in an NHL game,” Nichol said. “A guy isn’t going to be required, without the puck, to skate as fast as he can to the blueline and back, to the redline and back, to the far blueline and back. Just imagine a player actually doing that in a game.”

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Getting to test the body out in an actual game situation, Nichol feels, helps a player be closer to their best by the time they return to the NHL.

“If you were to jump back in the NHL lineup as most people do, you’d be fine, you’d be okay but is it the best you could have been? I would argue that no, it’s not,” he said.

To really illustrate the difference between general conditioning and sport-specific training at the elite level, Nichol drew a comparison to Lance Armstrong, who ran the New York City Marathon in 2006, but not very well. He finished 869th with a time of 2:59:36. The winning time that year was 2:09:57. Regardless of the doping allegations he has dealt with, the general mindset was that Armstrong was among the most well-conditioned athletes on the planet at the time. Finishing 50 minutes off the pace, that’s surprising.

“I can tell you, 20 years of pro sports, endurance sports, from triathlons to cycling, all of the Tours — even the worst days on the Tours — nothing was as hard as that, and nothing left me feeling the way I feel now, in terms of just sheer fatigue and soreness,” said Armstrong, at the time.

While Armstrong was conditioned for cycling, he had not trained to the same extent as elite level runners. It underscores the difference between general conditioning and sport-specific training.

“I’m sure if he took another year and trained just for that, I’m sure he would have crushed the time and done way better but the point being, it’s different,” said Nichol. “At the elite level, general fitness is good but if you want to compete at the elite level, which in hockey’s case is the NHL, and being a standout player, it’s not good enough. You need to be as specific as you can.”

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One of the big drawbacks against conditioning stints in hockey is the risk-level. In baseball, conditioning stints are common-place but the risk-level is relatively low. It makes sense for players to take a few games to get their timing back without the pressure of big league games being on the line. While there is certainly higher level of risk of sustaining an independent injury in hockey, in cases like Parise’s, Nichol feels it’s worth it to let him get the feel of the game back in a more controlled environment.

The key is adhering to the plan and not prioritizing winning the game at the AHL level ahead of the player’s rehab strategy. It’s easier to manage minutes in the AHL if the whole organization understands what the purpose of “Player X”’s presence is.

Many NHL coaches will say they intend to “watch or limit the minutes” of a player returning from an injury. Then the game happens and before you know it, they’ve played over 20 minutes just as they normally would at full health. Limiting minutes is nice to say but if you are down a goal in the third period, find the coach who will look at his best player on the bench and not put them on the ice.

“I’ve seen firsthand how many times coaches have said that at all levels. Everyone says they’re going to manage minutes,” said Nichol. “There’s no maliciousness but coaches are trying to win games.”

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Nichol, who served as the Toronto Maple Leafs strength and conditioning coach from 2002-2009, recalled his relationship with then-head coach Paul Maurice when it came to working a player back into the lineup after an injury.

“He would tell me, ‘you tell me when this guy can play again and then that’s the end of our relationship. You hand him off to me at that point. If he’s not able to play 25 minutes a night, power play, penalty kill, any situation I want, I don’t want him’,” said Nichol.

That’s not an uncommon mindset among NHL coaches. If a player is dressed and in the lineup, he’s assumed to be 100 percent.

Parise reported feeling good after his return with Iowa to game action and said that it was a confidence builder for him after so long away from the game. He plans to skate with the Minnesota Wild over the weekend in hopes of returning to their lineup sometime next week.

Will the success of his conditioning stint lead other teams and players to taking a similar course of action? We’ll have to wait and see, but it certainly would not be amiss to suggest NHL teams are more than happy to copy their counterparts when they notice positive results.

Dave McCarthy