As I put my mask on and walked into PNC Arena for the first time in more than four months, I couldn’t decide if it felt like more like two weeks or two years without hockey.
One of my favorite security guards opened the media-designated entrance door, and I was relieved to hear he is doing well. I went through the list of COVID-19 symptoms and promised I had none of them, got my temperature taken (97.9 degrees Fahrenheit, baby!) and signed in. I took the elevator, marked to indicate appropriate social distancing, up to the designated media area and saw many familiar faces — rather, many familiar eyeballs.
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Like many of you, I’ve approached professional sports returning to play with a healthy skepticism. So it was reassuring to see for myself that the Hurricanes, at least, are doing everything right in this regard.
“That’s probably the No. 1 thing we’re talking about. We can do everything we can to prepare on the ice, we can do everything top notch, but if we don’t do it out in public and someone comes down with this, it pretty much takes you right out of it,” coach Rod Brind’Amour said via Zoom Monday. “And then who knows how it goes through the team and this and that. Everyone understands the severity of what getting sick could mean; it could just derail everything. Having said that, guys understand it and we’re doing our best. That’s all we ask of them, really. Tighten the circle? Yes. Are we wearing masks? Of course. ”
It was also clear that some players and staff are proceeding with cautious optimism — and they’re free to admit it.
“I don’t think you really think about it,” said Dougie Hamilton via Zoom on Monday, when I asked his opinion on returning to play amid COVID-19. “We’re looking out for one another. You have to be responsible and try not to get sick, obviously. Other than that it’s exciting to play hockey again and it’ll be different for sure — nobody has experienced it before. Just being in the hotel locked down is going to be different, no fans, playing in August, the heat and all that stuff. But it’s exciting, it’s something new and we’re all in it together. If someone gets it or it goes around it’s going to put us behind pretty hard for any guys around the league. We’re just trying to be as responsible as we can, but I mean you can do everything right and still get it. So we’ll see what happens.”
With unprecedented times come unprecedented sacrifice, and that’s on top of the already difficult pursuit of the Stanley Cup. New parents, like Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal, could be away from their children for months at a time.
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“It’s unfortunate, obviously there’s a lot of people hurting throughout this whole pandemic and that’ll be a sacrifice — a difficult one,” Staal said. “I’ll miss my boy’s first steps, his first birthday, stuff like that. Stuff that I want to be there for. But opportunities like this don’t come along too often and the guys in that room want it just as much as I do. I’m here now to try to win, and it’s part of the sacrifice. There’s a ton of other sacrifices that you’re gonna have to make to win Cups, and that’s just one of them this year.”
(I tweeted an excerpt of this interview and promptly deleted it when folks were getting snarky. Please … 1. Remember how Staal’s daughter, Hannah, was stillborn in 2018. 2. Recognize how difficult it is to articulate the perfect words in this situation — especially via video chat. 3. Have some empathy. 4. Read this story for more context on how Staal leaned on hockey and family in the wake of the tragic circumstances surrounding his daughter.)
Anyways, once I got past all the necessary changes and settled into our new media area, things felt almost shockingly normal.
I couldn’t help but smile at Brind’Amour’s voice echoing all over the ice, at Justin Williams joining the coaches at the white board to explain how a certain drill worked, at someone (I’d bet on Jordan Martinook or Andrei Svechnikov) screaming “DOOOOGIE,” as Hamilton attempted the first penalty shot of this training camp.
He missed, so the Canes had to sprint. But he’s officially back on the ice, after a broken fibula ended his career-high pace of 14 goals, 40 points and average time on ice of 23:17 through 47 games.
“I feel good, I think. Hopefully I’ll feel better and better as we go, but I feel pretty good,” he said. “There’s some stuff that isn’t perfect, but it’s getting better and better as I go. I’m just trying to keep on working on stuff off the ice as well, hopefully that’ll help.”
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Andrei Svechnikov joked last month that Hamilton had an edge coming into the playoffs, considering he was allowed special access to ice time and trainers for rehabilitation purposes. Hurricanes head athletic trainer Doug Bennett told me they’d been able to monitor him daily and get him back up to speed — “in that regard, unlucky but lucky.”
“That’s a big wild card for us,” Brind’Amour said. “I think he looked good out there today, but it was a fairly light practice. But if we can project him to be back to even 90 percent or 80 percent of what he was, that’s going to be a big boost for us. I’m hoping he’s 100 percent ready to go once this gets going.”
“I think I was lucky I got to keep my same routine. (At first) I was going to physio away from the team at a clinic,” Hamilton said Monday. “The people were amazing. They helped me so much through the injury, being positive with me. When you’re alone all the time it’s nice to get out of the house and go there. I’d spend like five hours a day there. I had my one hour slot but they wouldn’t kick me out, so it was good for me. They were still open during all the closings so I was able to do that, then transition to working out with (strength and conditioning coach Bill Burniston) and doing all the skating and stuff after that.”
The “fairly light practice” was still pretty high tempo — nothing too intricate with drills, but definitely some conditioning in the form of sprints and loser push-ups. The most telling advanced analytic — Martinook screams-per-60 — was up to snuff. So was the goal horns-per-60.
"We need to keep our own juice going"
Rod knows what the boys are up against pic.twitter.com/7yk3WRXPfU
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) July 13, 2020
Staal, Brind’Amour and Hamilton all said the first day of training camp was heavy on film and refreshing the systems, and they’re working on ramping up the intensity without sparking injury.
Here are some other news and notes from the first day back.
- The moment you’ve all been waiting for! The lines:
~~~~THE LINES~~~
FIRST LINE SVECH – AHO – TURBO
MCGINN – STAAL – WILLIAMS
NINO- TROCHECK – DZINGEL
FOEGELE – MARTINOOK – GEEKIE
— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 13, 2020
- You’ll notice Martin Necas is absent from those lines. Per current NHL protocol, the Hurricanes couldn’t comment on why he didn’t take the ice for Day 1 of training camp. Here’s one of presumably many friendly reminders that this protocol is the same no matter what injury or illness a player is dealing with this postseason.
- I can confirm Sami Vatanen exists.
- Brind’Amour on if a player were to opt-out: “It’s pretty easy. If somebody’s going to approach me on that, they’ve obviously thought it through and there’s going to be a good reason for it. I think we all understand that. That’s the thing about this. We all get it. It affects everybody one way or another. Some people have more concern, obviously. I know there’s health issues and underlying factors that make your decisions different. I’m lucky that we didn’t have that one. We didn’t have anybody come and say “Hey, I’m worried about me or someone in my family,” whatever. It just didn’t happen. If it does, we would be open arms to any reason or concern anyone has. That’s just how we are.”
- See you again tomorrow.
(Photo of Dougie Hamilton and Jordan Staal: John McCreary / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)