The dawn of an NHL season offers unparalleled promise. It's a slate wiped clean for the ultimate fresh start. Everyone's on equal footing again, in an official erasure of whatever happened -- good or bad -- the prior campaign.
That opening puck drop doesn't come without months of preparation, though, and we're not just talking in the gym. Getting game-day ready goes beyond just the weight a player can handle on the squat rack -- to how they manage the load of inevitable expectation on their shoulders.
"I think the hardest part of pro hockey and being in the NHL isn't necessarily the physical part," Anaheim Ducks forward Troy Terry told ESPN at the NHL's player tour in Las Vegas this month.