A forward gets tangled up with a defenseman along the wall. Both going hard for the puck. Sticks slashing, shoulders grinding, neither giving an inch. The forward finally muscles it free and shovels it to a teammate in the slot.
"That's compete level!" Coach shouts. "That's what wins games in March!"
Reid steps in for the next rush, takes a hit along the boards that I feel in my seat, and still manages to make the pass. The forward one-times it. The goalie makes the save but gives up a rebound. Another forward crashes the net, jams it home through traffic.
"That's a goal because Reid sacrificed his body to make the play," Coach says, pointing at the sequence. "Nobody remembers pretty passes. They remember who wanted it more."
Twenty minutes in, and I can see the fatigue setting in. Breath coming in clouds. Faces flushed. But the intensity doesn't drop. If anything, it ratchets up—like everyone knows the real test is operating at this level when your legs are screaming.
Coach blows the whistle. "Power play units. First group, let's see some puck movement."
They run through set plays—practiced sequences where everyone knows where they're supposed to be. Except under pressure, those clean patterns fall apart. A pass is a second late. A guy's not quite in position. The whole thing breaks down.
"Reset. Run it again until it's automatic."
They do. Seven times. Eight. On the ninth rep, it finally clicks—the puck moves fast, the defense can't adjust, andsomeone finds the seam for a one-timer that beats the goalie clean.
"That's the rep that matters," Coach says. "Not the pretty ones. The one where you're exhausted and you execute anyway."
Then comes the part I knew was coming but still makes me wince.
"Conditioning. Bags on the line."
The collective groan ripples through the team. I've seen Easton skate these enough times to know they're brutal.
"Blue line and back, red line and back, far blue and back, goal line and back. Five sets. Move."
They line up across the goal line and explode forward on Coach's whistle. The first sprint looks clean. Strong strides, good form. By the second set, the technique starts to slip. By the fourth, it's pure survival. Faces red, mouths hanging open, legs heavy.
Garrett keeps pace with players ten years younger. He's not faster—but he doesn't slow down. When a rookie starts to fade, Garrett drops back beside him.
"Come on, kid. Mind over matter."
The rookie looks like he might die, but he finds another gear.
The final set is carnage. Everyone's dead on their feet, but nobody quits. They finish, then collapse at center ice, pulling water bottles from their helmets and gasping.
This is the job. Not the games. Not the highlights. This. The work nobody sees that makes everything else possible.
Coach gives them thirty seconds, then calls them to center ice for video review. They drag themselves over, still breathing hard, and cluster around his tablet while he breaks down yesterday's game film.
I catch fragments—"gap control," "weak side support," "lose the puck battle, lose the shift"—but mostly I'm watching the way they absorb information while their bodies are still recovering. How they nod at corrections, ask questions, stay locked in even though every muscle probably wants to shut down.
Practice ends at eight-fifteen. Players skate off toward the tunnel in groups, some chirping each other about blown plays, others silent with exhaustion.
I'm packing up my tablet when I realize what I just witnessed.
I came here for content. For footage. For marketing angles.
What I got was a reminder that hockey—real hockey—isn't a product. It's work. Brutal, repetitive, unglamorous work done at six forty-five in the morning when no one's watching. And the difference between good and great is who's willing to do that work when it hurts.
My tablet is full of notes, but the real takeaway won't fit in a content calendar: these guys earn every dollar, every cheer, every moment of glory with hours of suffering in empty rinks.
I look back at the ice one more time. The Zamboni's already making its rounds again, erasing every trace of the morning's work.
Like it never happened.
But it did. And tomorrow they'll do it again.
