KEEP ON ROLLIN’
Penguins’ Jason Zucker credits rollerblading for much of his NHL success, and in this time away from the ice he is wheeling again
Most days, weather permitting, Jason Zucker laces up his roller blades and hits the pavement to do what he can to stay ready for hockey’s potential return.
The Penguins winger, back with his wife and three children at their family home in a quiet suburb of Minneapolis, varies his workouts on wheels.
Zucker often does sprints around his block, blowing past mailboxes like they are flat-footed defensemen. Other times, he roller-blades to one of the two lakes near his neighborhood, then powers through a scenic endurance skate. He also executes skill-specific drills in his driveway, his roller blades simulating the balance and weight distribution needed to stick-handle and fire pucks.
Zucker’s aim might even be better than ever when all of this ends.
“It’s funny. My driveway has a bit of a slope, so the bottom is the only part that is flat. The only way I can have the net flat is where I’m shooting at my neighbor’s
house,” he said, with a laugh. “So I’ve been trying to work on my accuracy as best as possible. I haven’t hit his house yet, so that’s a positive.”
Zucker, whom the Penguins acquired in February via a trade with the Minnesota Wild, admits the scene feels surreal. But not for the reason you think.
These makeshift rollerblade workouts during the NHL’s pause are bringing back fond memories. Zucker’s trailblazing path to the pros began on eight wheels, and he credits roller hockey for helping him become the skilled scorer he is today.
‘Our way of life’
Zucker was born in 1992 in Newport Beach, Calif., and his family moved to Las Vegas months later. His mother, Natalie, is a former figure skater, and his father, Scott, is in construction. When Zucker was a kid, Scott was part of the team that built the Las Vegas Ice Center, which was initially a roller hockey venue.
During the 1990s, roller hockey was huge in the desert, in part because ice time was scarce. The thought then of an NHL team one day thriving in Las Vegas would only have sounded plausible after a long, boozy night on the Strip.
The oldest Zucker boy, Adam, played a bunch of sports. He got hooked on roller hockey. Jason, the middle child among five siblings, soon followed him onto the Sport Court. He first laced up a pair of roller blades at age 2 or 3.
“It wasn’t that I chose [roller hockey] over ice hockey. That was just what we played,” the 5-foot-11, 192-pound winger said. “That’s what I knew and that’s what I grew to love. It was our way of life. To us, that was hockey.”
Roller hockey, also called inline hockey, is a much different game than ice hockey from a rules and strategy standpoint. Played at 4-on-4 with no offside, icing or body-checking, it is more of a skill-based game. With an emphasis on puck possession, it can look like the deliberate style of play now common in the NHL’s 3-on-3 overtime.
Zucker still appreciates the individual creativity mixed with team strategy.
“You couldn’t just be the rough-and-tough team and hit the other team out of the building,” he said. “You had to play the game and you had to have skill. And you had to have a game plan because some teams would take it back and slow the game down. And some were turn and burn and going nonstop.”
Still a speedster, Zucker preferred the turning and burning. He also raced in competitive inline speed skating back then. So he was typically one of the fastest on the rink while playing year-round in roller leagues and traveling tournament series such as the North American Roller Hockey Championships.
It wasn’t until around age 7 that Zucker, who credits roller hockey for helping him to hone NHL-caliber puck skills, began his transition to ice hockey.
Get inline
For a few years, it was ice in the winter and roller in the summertime. But after Micah Sanford, an older kid from Las Vegas, played junior hockey in the British Columbia Hockey League and then earned a scholarship at Nebraska-Omaha, Zucker’s eyes were opened to the possibilities that ice hockey presented.
“That’s when people [in Las Vegas] were like, ‘Whoa, ice hockey is a big deal,’ ” he recalled. “‘We should probably start focusing on that a little bit more.’ ”
At ages 11 and 12, Zucker would fly to Los Angeles on weekends to play peewee at a higher caliber than Las Vegas could offer. At 15, he was off to Michigan to skate in the Compuware youth program. From there, he moved on to the National Team Development Program, Denver University and then Minnesota.
Zucker made his debut for the Wild in 2012. He was drafted in the second round in 2010 and eventually became the first player raised in Nevada to play in an NHL game.
“I absolutely love my roller-hockey background,” said Zucker, who has six goals and six assists in 15 games with the Penguins. “I wish I could still play.”
Kept off the ice since the NHL suspended its season March 12 due to the COVID19 pandemic, Zucker is one of many players who has turned to the streets.
Evgeni Malkin recently shared on Instagram a picture of him wearing inline skates and training gear. Marc-Andre Fleury threw on his blades before pushing his little boy on a stroller ride through his neighborhood. The Hughes brothers, Quinn and Jack, held their own small-group workout in a Michigan culde-sac.
Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, Claude Giroux and Aleksander Barkov are among the All-Stars who have been rocking roller blades during the pause.
The sudden demand for roller blades made it hard for some to find a pair online. Last month, the equipment manufacturer Bauer told ESPN that it had seen a 723% year-over-year increase in online traffic for content for inline skates.
Zucker is amused by the thought of so many NHL peers wheeling around.
“I wish we could get a roller hockey game going,” he said. “It would be pretty fun to see NHL guys playing roller hockey. That would be a pretty exciting game.”
Not perfect, but it’ll do
Given his background as one of a handful of NHL players who started on roller blades, Zucker knows well the pros and cons of using them to train for the ice.
Compared to ice skates, roller blades are heavier, have a longer contact surface with four wheels touching the ground and, obviously, lack the sharp edges that allow players to stop on a dime on the ice and zigzag through tight spaces.
Despite the spike in roller blades sales, his equipment rep from Bauer hooked him up with a model that has a similar boot to the ice skates he wears.
“It was good to be able to get some like I’m currently using on the ice so they feel a little bit more familiar than something completely different,” he said.
Because roller-blading is not a perfect simulation for darting around the ice, Zucker said guys must be careful not to overdo it and mess with muscle memory.
While roller-blading, especially during sprints, Zucker tries to focus on replicating his ice hockey stride so it isn’t out of whack whenever NHL players are permitted back inside team facilities, which could happen in the next few weeks.
“For me,” Zucker said, “it’s about just being on skates, keeping your groins and those skating muscles active and trying to make sure that stuff feels good and is not getting too stagnant just hanging out doing our [home] workouts.”
And while the whole friction factor while shooting pucks on pavement isn’t quite the same as slinging frozen pucks on the ice, it’s better than nothing.
Obviously, Zucker feels being on wheels is beneficial or he wouldn’t be roller-blading around lakes or buzzing his neighbor’s house with errant wrist shots.
If the season resumes, Zucker, feeling like a kid again out there, believes that being back on roller blades will help him make an impact on the ice.
“It’s pretty funny going out there and doing that. You’re so used to just going to the rink, so it’s a little different,” he said. “It makes you appreciate the setups we have.
“But I’m obviously lucky enough to be able to get [the roller blades] and use them in my driveway. It’s working out plenty fine for me right now.”