The glory-free days and solitary life of healthy scratches

May 01, 2024

Having shed their gear, showered and tugged on their suits, players were leaving the arena in clusters, thinking about that night’s game against the San Jose Sharks.

Or, more likely, contemplating lunch options.

Calgary Flames staffers, meanwhile, were lingering in the quiet corridor of HP Pavilion, trading banalities with travelling reporters.

Another morning skate in the books.

Well. Not quite.

Because, in a bit of a twist, the on-ice session had been somehow ongoing.

Suddenly, stomping down the hallway, making the long march from the gate to the dressing room, was Matthew Lombardi, sweating and swearing, waving his arms and shouting.

Not only was Lombardi serving as a healthy scratch that day a dozen seasons ago – an indignity for a regular (even one trying to find his legs after being cleared from injury) – he had been plumb forgotten by everyone, left to skate by his lonesome well past the allotted time.

Hence the sky-high level of irritation.

It’s well-established that extra work is part of the gig. If you’re not dressing for the game, then you’re on the hook for bonus drills in the morning. No questions asked.

But never is that supposed to be an unsupervised and open-ended arrangement, which is what made understandable Lombardi’s outrage.

However, like it or not, it happens to be one of the non-negotiable demands that extra players endure. For someone like Dalton Prout, a healthy scratch in all but one contest so far this season, prolonged morning skates become a built-in part of his routine.

Just like off-ice workouts during first periods.

Just like staying away from the regulars on game day.

For the extras, it’s a team-first – and potentially ego-diminishing – existence. Even if most people don’t realize the extent of the obligations.

“There’s not a big weight on who knows the work you’re putting in,” Prout said during the second intermission of a home game the other night. “That’s our job. The Calgary Flames put me on salary to be ready and to do whatever’s asked. So if I come to the rink and I’m not in the lineup? Well, my job is to get ready. Use the assistant coaches’ help. Use my strength coach’s help. Use all the resources they put in place for you to get ready for the next game. That little extra (work)? It feeds your own confidence. You’re not looking for any validation from any external sources.”

Internally, diligence is recognized.

“Everyone knows,” said Prout. “You can’t hide. You can’t fool a teammate. It’s your responsibility.”

Dalton Prout is all too familiar with the life of a healthy scratch. (Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports)

Anthony Peluso, scratched seven times before being assigned to AHL Stockton last week, insists that sweating behind the scenes is nothing heroic. After all, no one is around to applaud their summertime workouts, either.

“Maybe it’s appreciated if, down the line, there’s a stretch where you get into 20 or 30 games in a row,” Peluso said. “You can reflect back and say, ‘You know what? That’s the work that I put in when I wasn’t playing early on in the season.’ A little self-recognition on how hard you work. Those are the things that, as professional athletes, we look for, right? Every day we’re looking to improve. You want to stay at the top of your game? You’re got to put in the work.”

Prout and Peluso talked openly about their role – and the accompanying requirements – without sighing or eye-rolling, without snide comments or sarcasm.

That, according to Flames assistant Ryan Huska, is critical – the ability to bring an upbeat mindset to the rink.

“Because if you don’t, it wears on you,” Huska said. “All of a sudden, you go from being a really good guy to a bad person. The emotions get the best of you at times, (to the point) where you start becoming negative and you start pulling guys in with you. If you have the right attitude, it makes it a lot nicer for everyone to be around you.”

Added Prout: “If you’re not positive, it only works to your demise. You always want the team to do well because you want to come back into a winning culture. You want to support everyone and be positive. But that’s the challenge of our work, just like anyone who has challenges in their day-to-day life.”

For the most part, players buck up, making no claims of maltreatment. They accept that their days are generally glory-free.

Occasionally, though, a veteran – to his shock – will find himself on the outside. (The dressing-room white board, where written are the game’s line combinations, often conveys the bad news.)

And he may be steaming mad.

“Sometimes they haven’t had time to process it – so they may (view the additional work) a little differently,” Huska said. “They just haven’t been able to internalize it yet – they come to the rink, they find out they’re not playing, they’re not happy about it.

“Older guys all come to the rink expecting to play. When you see your name’s not on the board, then all of a sudden there’s, ‘What? What’s going on here?'”

Youngsters, too, may be rattled by game-time exclusions. After years as the go-to guy, through rep hockey and junior, you’re finally in the NHL – and, suddenly, this wrinkle. You’re told that you’re sitting out. Wait, what?

Being deemed a healthy scratch can test a player’s maturity.

“Maybe you take it more personally,” Prout said. “You’re worried about what people think. It’s all part of growing up. You’re scratched as a kid and you feel like, oh geez, you’re letting your parents down. Your buddies that came to the game to watch you, you feel like you’re letting them down. But you understand (eventually) there’s a lot of things that go into a hockey game. It’s the tip of an iceberg. It’s just part of the job.

“I’ve seen players get scratched. Whether they pout or piss and moan or feel sorry for themselves or have a negative aura about them, it’s going to bring anyone down. You don’t need that. That’s part of your responsibility when you’re out of the lineup – (to bring the) same work ethic, same positivity. Because by building everyone else up, you’re going to help yourself.”

Home teams, on game day, skate at 10:30 a.m. – and everyone practices for 30 minutes. Then the regulars flee, which leaves the ice for the extra players for an additional 15 minutes. But typically no more.

“Home ice is nice,” Prout chuckled. “You know you’re going to get saved by the Zamboni.”

Because, with few exceptions, visiting squads hit the ice at 11:30 sharp. Their window is 60 minutes. Meaning, on the road, after the primetime players exit, healthy scratches endure 30 extra minutes.

In other words, there had been good reason that morning for Lombardi’s lament – even if it drew a collective shrug from the Flames coaches on the premises.

But in the old days? Lombardi would have been begging for the whip-crackers to forget about him.

Healthy scratches, once upon a time, paid a steep price. Simply put – the morning skate was not considered the setting for skills development.

“When I (was not playing), you skated until you had nothing left, right?” Flames assistant coach Martin Gelinas said, who broke in with the 1989-90 Edmonton Oilers. “You’d be at the blueline and there’d be no puck and you’d go back and forth.”

Ryan van Asten chuckles when asked about that – the emptying of the extras’ tanks every game-day morning.

“That’s a really old-school approach,” the Flames’ strength and conditioning coach said. “It’s really easy to make someone tired. It’s probably the easiest thing to do – make someone fatigued on the ice. Just make them go as hard as they can for as long as they can.”

Which, of course, is what did happen – untold unfortunates skating endless miles on countless occasions.

“You would get in better shape, but are you going to fizzle out after Christmas?” Prout said. “If you get buried that often, I think you can’t recover. The human body can do only so much. That’s where the hiring of strength coaches and studying – the evolution of the sport – comes in. Working hard, but also smarter.”

And considering that morning skates used to commence at 10 a.m. – half an hour earlier – there had been even more time to wring out the healthy scratches.

“There was no rhyme or reason why you were doing it,” Gelinas said. “Now, there is.”

Because van Asten – along with his laptop-toting and study-parsing brethren around the NHL – makes sure that on-ice toil is productive. Not punitive. Van Asten dictates to Calgary’s assistants which type of energy systems should be targeted and what the ideal work-rest ratios are.

But the coaches are still responsible for devising the drills.

“Ryan gives us parametres for what he wants,” Huska said. “(Thursday) was quick bursts – sets of them, very quick, five seconds of work. We try to make them suited to what they have to do and see in a game.

“It’s not just about skating up and down anymore. Ultimately it’s to put them in a position where they feel good about themselves and they can have success when they come back in.”

By the way, if 15 minutes of extra skating doesn’t sound like much, you haven’t watched the wheezing. Just because it’s backed by highfalutin science does not mean it’s pleasant.

Gelinas comes armed with a stopwatch and a whistle, with plans and pylons. Mercy, he leaves in the coach’s room.

Still puffing one morning, Peluso is asked how he feels about his taskmaster.

“Some days, you could say you hate him,” he said, grinning. “But as much as you might curse at them under your breath, in the end you know that those are the guys in your corner.”

Gelinas gets it.

“I’m sure they don’t like me,” he said. “I’m sure they look at me in the morning and think, ‘What’s coming today?'”

There’s little griping, little stalling, from the worker bees, but it’s not only workout philosophies that have changed over the years.

“The generation we have now is different,” Gelinas said. “I had some guys in the past – like six years ago – and they didn’t like it. They were kind of old school. They just felt they didn’t need it.”

Even if today’s healthy scratches are driven by businesslike outlooks, they admit to harbouring moments of resentment.

Like when they spy teammates gliding off the ice at 11 a.m. – or sidling over to the players’ box for chuckles and chatter over bottles of Gatorade – all the while knowing the roughest part of their morning is about to take place.

“That’s when it sets in,” Prout said. “A lot of times when you’ve been scratched for five, 10, 15, 20 games and you’re on the road, you just haven’t been a part of it. You haven’t seen your teammates. You don’t eat with your teammates – your meals are at different times. You’re on the ice with them (for most of practice, but later) when you get undressed, you’re getting undressed with two guys. You’re not getting undressed with the team. It’s not fun, but it’s part of the job.”

“Sometimes you’re on the road and you have nothing but two guys and a backup goalie on the ice. You look up at the empty stands and you’ve got 40 minutes of work to put in … after you landed at 2 (a.m.) the night before. You’ve just got to put your head down and get through it.”

Assistant coaches are there to make sure it happens. They have their marching orders. Sympathy doesn’t enter into the equation.

“I don’t know if you feel sorry for them,” Huska says, “because they still are in the best league in the world. And it’s pretty awesome to come to the rink every day. It’s just us making sure we’re supporting them and we’re positive with them – that what they’re doing matters. That’s the biggest thing. If you can create that feeling where, yeah, it still does matter, then they will typically work hard when you’re on the ice.”

Huska is hardly heartless. He skated (and skated and skated) down this exact path. As a rookie with the 1995-96 IHL Indianapolis Ice, he dressed for 28 games.

“And I was healthy-scratched for the rest of them – a lot of over-and-backs and lines,” Huska said. “It’s tough for guys to go through it. But if you still come to the rink with a good attitude – ready and willing to work to try to make yourself better – when your chance comes, you’ll be ready to jump all over it.”

Preparation goes beyond the game-morning mandates.

Because there is an off-ice component – every time. But since there remains a chance that an extra will suit up that night – if one of regulars, say, has an injury flare-up or a family emergency – trips to the weight-room take place later in the day. During the actual game, in fact.

Hockey tradition dictates that scratches keep their distance, so they arrive while their teammates are on the ice warming up and then trudge into the workout room. By the time the horn sounds at the end of the first period, they’re finished. They monitor the rest of the game on a back-room TV or from the press box.

Away from home, evening workouts can become even more of an ordeal. Not only the exercising itself, but simply getting to the destination. Because you don’t bus with the regulars, you’re on your own.

“I’m telling you, some of the rinks when you’re trying to Uber in with three guys and luggage, it’s not a glamourous part of the NHL,” Prout said, smiling. “I’m circling arenas. I’m getting dropped off a block away because (of game-time traffic). But I think I’ve sat out in enough arenas that I know the short routes and the security entrances. Then you get in there and try to get in a workout.”

In addition to the demands, the role is challenging – for obvious reasons.

It’s hard to share in victories when you haven’t contributed on the ice. And it stings to know that you couldn’t help your team during a losing effort.

Sure, compensation is top-end – $800,000 U.S. this season for Prout – but no one wants to be considered a spare part.

“You’re never happy,” Prout said, buttoning up his dress-shirt cuffs while his teammates stepped onto the Saddledome ice for a third period. “You’re a hockey player. You want to play the game. But when you can’t do anything about the situation you’re in, you’ve just got to go day-by-day. Coaches want to see emotion. They want to see players engaged. They want to see people that care and want to be here. Different players show that in different ways.

“It’s tough. Because when you’re out of the lineup for an extended period of time, you miss all the small, intricate things and details that go into a game day. Looking at (pre-scouting video) before the game. You miss the game-day routines … the meetings. You’re not warming up at night and going on the ice, you’re going for workouts.

“When you’re out, it’s not about going back with a vengeance and being emotional and getting it all back at once. You’ve got to build your game back up from scratch.”

(Top photo: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

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