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A Former NHL Captain's View: What Makes a Good Dressing Room? |
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If you ask any retired athlete what they miss most about the game, the answer quite often will be his teammates and the atmosphere of the dressing room. The two things go hand in hand. From my point of view, however, the interaction within the dressing room is the key.
This the common denominator that binds any team together. Having a strong, confident, yet still relaxed atmosphere in the room is the foundation to being successful as a team. Everyone needs to feel like he belongs, is valued and is welcomed. In turn, each player must feel responsible not only for himself but answerable to everyone else in the room.
I’ve been in hockey dressing rooms most of my life. I started playing hockey when I was five years old and I retired when I was 36 years old. I was in a dressing room pretty much every day for those 31 years. It’s no wonder that we miss it when we retire!
Over the years, the rooms themselves have changed. What has not changed the notion that the dressing room is a sacred place is still the same today as it was all those years ago.
As a matter of fact, the dressing room may be more important than ever today. Nowadays, there is often less group interaction off-the-ice among teammates than there was in the past. In my playing days, especially in Philadelphia, we used to spend a lot of time together in groups or as an entire team on a regular basis, away from the rink as well as at the rink. Today, players go off on their own or in small cliques much more frequently, so pretty much all off-ice team time takes places in the dressing room.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD DRESSING ROOM?
First of all, look at the size of the room. Most modern-day dressing rooms are way too big. There are too many places for players to hide.
Let me explain. The number one key to the success of any team is accountability: accountability to yourself, your teammates and to the organization.
As an NHL player who was the captain or an assistant on each team that I played on, I wanted to be able to look each player in the eye while we were getting ready, at intermission and especially after the game.
My first memory of the dressing room goes way back to minor hockey. My first coaches, particularly Bruce Stewart, impressed on us that we leave the room as we entered it –- clean.
Bruce told us we could not leave the room until the room was spotless. The dressing room was a special place and we were taught to treat our room with respect. While I am sure that my dad tied my skates early on when I started playing, I honestly cannot remember him doing so. Parents weren’t allowed in the dressing room. The room was a place for the team only. This detail is one of the problems in minor hockey today, if you ask me.
ROOMS WORTH REMEMBERING
LONDON GARDENS
Hats off to long time London Knights trainer Donnie Brankley, recently retired after being head trainer for nearly 40 years. I spent 6 years at the London Gardens and "Branks" ran the dressing room like it was an extension of our own home.
Just like our home, it was clean and we players were expected to keep it clean.
Our dressing room was like a mini Hockey Hall of Fame, a shrine to the history of the London Knights and its players. Too many players nowadays don't even look at these things when they are in the room. Back then, we were expected to learn something about our team's heritage and traditions. Our coaches and team leaders made sure of it.
Our room consisted of three smaller rooms with an uneven ceiling because it was built under the stands. It was small but it sure was home to me.
BEST MEMORY: Ice cold Coke right after practice, left on your seat by dressing room assistant Brian Dennis.
THE OMNI
Atlanta was my first experience with the two dressing room system that many teams in the league use today. Because our home rink was a very busy place with NBA basketball and concerts, we only were there for game days. Our practice facility was in Marietta, Georgia, where we practiced everyday and then we’d head to the Omni for games.
We had two sets of equipment so the trainers did not have to cart the equipment back and forth every day. This came in handy when breaking in new equipment.
BEST MEMORY: We shared the training room with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. They were there before us, so everything was designed to accommodate their heights and us small hockey players had to reach for everything! Even as someone who stands 6-foot-3, I felt like a shrimp in that room!
THE CORRAL
As I said in an earlier blog, it was pretty neat being back in “hockey country” when the Flames team moved to Calgary in 1980. The Saddledome wasn’t built until I left for Philly, so the old historic Corral was home to me.
They had to build a brand new dressing room to accommodate the team. With little or no room in and around the existing structure, the dressing room was basically located out in the grand foyer of the Corral.
BEST MEMORY: Each time we took to the ice we had to walk through the fans several hundred feet to get to the ice. It was a pretty neat experience, because we certainly got that up-close interaction. Also, there was no skate-guard flooring on the walkway. They just rolled out the red carpet for us each time we entered or left the dressing room.
THE SPECTRUM
What a lot of hockey fans outside the Delaware Valley do not realize is that, over the years the vast majority of the Flyers, have lived in South Jersey and drive across the Walt Whitman bridge to Philly for the games. In Philadelphia, we had two dressing rooms as well. We played in Philly, but practiced in Voorhees, New Jersey (except when I first got to the Flyers and we still practiced at the Class of 1923 Rink at the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia).
The Flyer dressing room at the Spectrum was 100% functional from a team perspective. There was a small change room where you hung up your clothes and a small dressing room where we got dressed as a team and everything was painted in Flyer colours. I can honestly say that I don’t remember the colour of any of my other dressing rooms, but the Flyer colours jumped at me the first time I entered.
That small room was specifically built for team accountability. My first game at the Spectrum is when I felt the stare of some of the greatest leaders in pro sports -- Bob Clarke and company. They were sizing the new guy up. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out if you had a good game or a bad game. The look from across the room would say it all.
Our Voorhees rink at the time was called the Coliseum. It was our home away from home, with most of us living just a short drive (in some cases even walking distance) away. We shared a lot time together there as a team: before, during and even after practice. The team has since moved to a new place, also located in Voorhees.
The newer practice rink recently underwent a renovation. I have not been there but apparently the room is ultra-modern in the sense of technologies like video screens on the wall and a surrounding audio system (with speakers located inside a puck-shaped dome on the ceiling with a Flyers logo in the middle). More important from my point of view, it is also designed to be retro in the fact that the room itself is smaller and players are physically closer together with everyone able to see everyone else. No hiding!
BEST MEMORY: When the Spectrum closed, Mr. Snider threw a final farewell and invited some former players. The party was on the arena floor, our dressing room was a short walk up the hallway from the bench and the room was opened just for the players. It didn’t take long for many of the players to gravitate toward the old dressing room, and each of us instinctively went and sat in our old stalls. My oldest son, Erik, was with me and we got plenty of pictures of him sitting in my stall.
Now that the old arena has been demolished and there is a restaurant/bars/shops complex in its place, the memories and photos from that gathering are even more special.
MAPLE LEAF GARDENS
Toronto was truly a neat experience walking into that storied dressing room for the first time. There was a lot of history on the walls, all of the previous award winners had a plaque on the wall. It was an iconic NHL dressing room that I was now a part of and I was honoured to be a Leaf.
The dressing room was small, but very functional. Unfortunately we did not have enough leadership in the room to be worried about being given ‘the stare’ if we didn't pull our weight. There wasn’t much accountability in Toronto those days.
BEST MEMORY: The whirlpool in the shower room, complete with an ice plunge. After playing for 10 seasons in the league, this was the first time that I had access to a whirlpool. Today, this is a given in any professional sports team dressing room.
JOE LOUIS ARENA
I was awestruck when I first entered the dressing room in Detroit. It was the biggest dressing room that I had ever been in during my career. It had several different areas that made up the complete dressing room but the key is that where the players put on their equipment it was functional, and players could hold each other accountable.
BEST MEMORY: The training room was as big and as complete as many of today’s full service gyms and who could forget the fresh-made Little Caesars post-game pizzas.
OTTAWA CIVIC CENTRE
Our set up in Ottawa was very similar to Calgary’s. The new rink would not be built for several years, so we were playing in a very old and historic building – The Civic Centre. Just as was the case in Calgary, they had to build a new dressing to accommodate the NHL team that had just moved in. Just like so many things that year, it wasn’t ideal but it was what it was.
BEST MEMORY: Our dressing room at the Civic Centre was downstairs and we had to walk up a set of stairs to get to the foyer and then to our cars. After every game the foyer was filled several hundred cheering fans. Win, lose, or draw (remember tie games?), they were behind us.
The Ottawa fans were so happy to have an NHL team to cheer for that it didn’t seem to matter that we couldn’t pull together too many wins. I really appreciated it. Unfortunately, in today's game this interaction with the fan is long gone. Players deal with fans only in small doses and in highly controlled settings. It’s a shame. It's a shame for the fans but also the players, too. They miss out on learning what the team truly means to the people who support the club, and they also lose out on some great friendships as well.
ALWAYS THE LAST ONE OUT
I loved the dressing room, to me it did not matter how fancy it was. It was the dressing room, home for so many years.
People quite often ask me if I miss the game. Of course I miss the game, but I really miss everything that surrounds the game and the dressing room is the one thing that is a constant.
With all that is going on with regards to the dressing room of the Miami Dolphins recently, it occurred to me that many people do not understand what the dressing room means or the significance that it represents in an athlete’s life.
I am not going to get into the dynamics of the Miami story. All I will say is that what is going on there makes me sick and there is no room for players such as Richie Incognito in any dressing room or on any team for that matter.
As far as the attitude that “What happens in the locker room should stay there” goes, they are wrong, and that is coming from an old-school hockey guy. The dressing room is an extension of the organization, the team and the individuals on the team.
The dressing room makes players into a team. That team carries itself forward with pride, respect and dignity knowing that as individuals, they will do anything for each other in order for the team to achieve success. When someone disrespects that atmosphere and makes it a hostile place for his own teammates, that person needs to be called out and removed from the environment.
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