Advertisem*nt
Continue reading the main story
Supported by
Continue reading the main story
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — It was past midnight when the Pittsburgh Penguins walked into the lobby of an upscale hotel in downtown Vancouver. On the fourth night of a recent trip, they had just flown from Edmonton, where they defeated the Oilers in an overtime shootout.
After veteran players like Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin grabbed their key cards and immediately retreated to their rooms, a group of entry-level players were left in suspense at the front desk.
They were waiting to find out their roommate assignments.
Usually there is a room list to peruse, according to goaltender Matt Murray, 22, who, despite having helped the team win the Stanley Cup last season, is still technically a rookie.
But Oskar Sundqvist, a 23-year-old center who was called up from Wilkes-Barre Scranton a day earlier, discovered his new roommate in a less conventional way.
“I picked up my key and walked into the room and saw Carter Rowney in there,” said Sundqvist, a native of Sweden. “I had no idea.”
Having a roommate on the road is an atypical practice in major professional sports. Players in the N.B.A. and Major League Baseball have long been entitled to having their own room, though the N.F.L. does pair up some teammates based on hotel availability.
But in the N.H.L., where the average salary is just over $2.95 million, players on entry-level contracts still have to share a room during trips.
Image
Before the latest collective bargaining agreement, which was revised in 2013, most players had road roommates. Only players who had amassed more than 600 career games (or had 10 years of experience) were afforded the privilege of privacy. Typically, a rookie was matched with a veteran to promote mentorship and team camaraderie.
For the Penguins’ entry-level players, including a couple of first-liners and a Vezina Trophy candidate, this means not only sharing a bathroom, TV and alarm clock, but also learning teammates’s habits and abnormal tendencies.
“Rowney tells me that I talk in my sleep, but I’m not really sure,” wing Jake Guentzel, 22, said with a laugh.
He has had plenty of road roommates while playing at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and Wilkes-Barre Scranton.
“I’m easy — I usually give him the remote, whatever he feels like watching,” said Guentzel, who was paired with his fellow linemate Conor Sheary in Vancouver. “It’s all about communication with your roommate.”
Professional athletes are creatures of habit. With each player having his own game-day routine — whether it’s a pregame nap or meal, or listening to music — there is an understanding between roommates.
“Some guys nap longer than others before games, so you want to give them space,” Calgary Flames forward Garnet Hathaway said. “If he’s falling asleep quick, I’ll throw on my headphones on and read.”
On the Flames’ trip to Vancouver in February, Hathaway, 25, was paired with Matthew Tkachuk, a 19-year-old rising star, for the first time. The day before, Tkachuk’s previous roommate, Brett Kulak, was sent back to the Flames’ A.H.L. affiliate.
“Brett liked to go to bed early, wake up early, so I kind of changed my routine where we’d wake up at the crack of dawn to go eat,” said Tkachuk, the son of the former N.H.L. player Keith Tkachuk. “You feel more comfortable with a guy you’re with for most of a road trip.”
With injuries, trades and entry-level players constantly going up and down from the minors, roommate assignments can be sporadic. Despite Hathaway and Tkachuk’s six-year age gap, the two were able to establish common ground.
“I grew up in Maine, and he has some New England roots too, so we threw on ‘The Departed,’” said Hathaway, who was reassigned to the A.H.L. three days later. “It’s something we both know and can relate to.”
Just because teams have the right to assign roommates to entry-level players does not mean they always do. The Detroit Red Wings rookies Anthony Mantha and Andreas Athanasiou had their own rooms all season. But that is more of a result of a favorable total head count versus a deliberate break in tradition.
For the Penguins, who currently have the league’s fourth-best record (105 points), it looks as if the rookie team building may be paying off. Sheary (51 points) and Guentzel (26 points) have been solid contributors on Pittsburgh’s first line, complementing Crosby. Rowney, a 27-year-old right wing, has been a surprise, finding a niche with the Penguins after spending years buried in the minors.
Murray’s clutch goaltending was a key factor for the Penguins’ Stanley Cup run last season. This year in 45 games, he was seventh in the N.H.L. in save percentage (.923).
He found comfort in having a roommate last season, particularly during the finals.
“I think in that scenario it was good just because if you have a bad game, you are not sitting in your room alone thinking to yourself how you could have done better,” Murray said. “It gives you a chance to kind of loosen up and have fun with your buddies.”
But that was then, and this is now. Murray is classified as a rookie because he played in fewer than 25 regular-season games in 2015-16, but the logistics gods looked out for one of the league’s top young goaltenders during that trip to Vancouver.
“Here, I got my own room, thankfully,” he said. “I like having my own room better.”
Advertisem*nt
Continue reading the main story
