MORNING SKATE

Just how outdated, counterproductive, and flat idiotic is the ongoing practice of practicing on the days of games?!

The answer is: Very.

The genesis of this now antiquated tool of preparation has many fathers, and some very sketchy reasoning.

Billy Reay

One story has it starting with the Soviets who at the time were slaves to whatever whims the communist establishment felt gave them a competitive edge. So they trained, and they trained hard, and they trained all the time -- including the day of a game.

Another legend was relayed to me just the other day. This one claims that Blackhawk coaching great Billy Reay (no relation) was forced to institute the "morning skate" as a way of getting some of his players, o.k. most of his players, to sweat out the previous night's libations. It was a black cup of coffee on blades.

Whatever the impetus, it caught on.

And today it is part of the rhythm of the day between October and April.

At least it is for 29 teams. The other team -- The New Jersey Devils under rookie head coach Brent Sutter, (and with Lou Lammourello's blessing of course) has decided to save a little for the game. Yep, the go-to-the-beat-of-their-own-drum Devs haven't had a practice on the morning of a game day since early November.

Will others follow? Probably not -- too radical for the, "But we've always done it that way" crowd.

No other sport I know of purposely wears down it's athletes and grinds its people like hockey. Football doesn't. Could you imagine them in full pads the morning of a Monday Night game?! Baseball has batting practice and infield prior to the game. (And so does hockey, it's called a warmup and it takes 15 minutes a half hour prior to the start of the game. That should suffice). Basketball probably comes the closest to what hockey is apparently married to. They have a morning shoot around but its said to usually be slow-paced and informal.

And what about professions outside the sporting world?

Adopting hockey's mentality musicians would show up and sing or play at 10 in the morning then come back and warmup again just before they took the stage for a couple hours. Hopefully the vocal chords would hold up.