Marner learns to fly — and soars
Intense off-season training is paying off. No NHL forward is playing or scoring more
It’s been a mantra of star NHL players through the generations: The more you play, the better you perform.
So shush for a moment the science-based arguments on the merits of careful load management of prized franchise assets. And consider for a moment that it might not be a coincidence that Maple Leafs forward Mitch Marner was leading the NHL in a couple of important statistical categories. Heading into Monday’s games, Marner led all forwards in total time on ice. He was also leading the league in total points.
“It just looks like he’s flying,” Morgan Rielly, Marner’s longtime teammate, was saying on Monday.
If Marner’s workload has been surprisingly high to some eyes — his 24:03 a game does raise an eyebrow considering he averaged 21:33 last season — let’s just say it’s hardly unexpected. Marner, for one, knew the heavy minutes were coming. When the player sat down with longtime strength and conditioning coach Dan Noble to plan his off-season training this past summer, Noble said Marner had already been informed by the Leafs brain trust that they were pencilling him in for something in the ballpark of “26 minutes a night.”
To which Noble replied with a frank assessment: “I told him, ‘This is going to be one of the hardest off-seasons of your life. And there’s going to be a lot of times you’re going to want to kill me.’ ”
The training sessions, done among a regular training group that included fellow NHLer Anthony Cirelli of the Tampa Bay Lightning, were certainly murderously long. They generally began with a 30- to 40minute “warmup” that most people would consider a fullbody workout in itself, including drills to improve coordination, not to mention the range of motion in Marner’s hips — a common area of tightness in hockey players that’s a frequent flashpoint of injury.
“When you get fatigued, range of motion reduces. And when range of motion reduces, you become more susceptible to soft-tissue injuries,” Noble said.
From there, the group hit the
weight room for a strength workout, maintaining and building muscle to keep them robust enough to weather an NHL season: Again — a formidable workout in itself for mere mortals.
Then came the hardest part: A day-capping conditioning stint designed to enhance what Noble calls “speed endurance” — the ability to go fast, and the keep going fast, for longer than seems humanly wise. It was this part of Marner’s training that was geared toward improving his ability to look like he’s flying no matter how many minutes he’s logged.
“In overtime last year, there were a couple of times (Marner) was chasing guys down on breakaways and he just couldn’t get there,” Noble said. “And we looked at that and we said, ‘We don’t want that to ever happen again.’ ”
With that in mind, a typical training segment began with Marner and his partners running 100-metre sprints in 15 seconds or less, then repeating the exercise six times with a mere 45 seconds to recover in between. Then came an aspect of Noble’s regimen that frustrated athletes, albeit by design. Sometimes those halfdozen 100-metre sprints marked the end of the workout. Sometimes there was more to come. Noble generally kept the agenda secret.
“I think there’s a lot of value in throwing some chaos at these guys. So they’d think we were done and I’d say, ‘OK, now
we’re going to go for a 10-minute all-out run,’ ” Noble said. “And they’d have to cover as much distance as possible in that time.”
Noble said that by the end of the off-season, Marner was using those 10 minutes to cover nearly four kilometres — a brisk pace, to be sure. And sometimes those 10 minutes didn’t conclude the day. Speaking of overtime, more than once Noble demanded Marner and his colleagues run another half-dozen 100-metre sprints, during which Noble wasn’t only observing the time on his stopwatch but the body language of his athletes.
“It’s about learning to work tired. And not only to work tired, but to work well tired. Being mindful of your mechanics,” Noble said. “But every time they come back from that 10-minute run, our athletes were more dialed in for the second set of 100s. I think it’s that sense: ‘I came this far. I’m not going to stop now.’ And so that fuel tank continues to get expanded.”
Noble said that among his group of elite players, “emotions were high this off-season.” There was the maddening uncertainty about when the season would begin, if it would begin at all. And Noble had his own headaches, having opened his Grit Athletics gym in Leaside during the summer, only to see COVID-related restrictions shut him down not long after his fledgling business got started.
“But it was almost the perfect scenario for a groundbreaking off-season. Everyone was on edge and pushing and competing and fighting at the same time,” Noble said.
On top of all that, Marner was emerging from the fog of a difficult season that was largely defined by the contentious contract talks with the Leafs that netted him a six-year contract with an annual average of $10.9 million (U.S.) at the outset of training camp. As much as Marner put up elite numbers, racking up 67 points in 59 games, a ho-hum performance in a play-in loss to the Blue Jackets was hardly a satisfying result.
The stress that accompanied the deal and the criticism that surrounded it, Noble said, “took a toll.”
“And I understand that no one’s empathetic to someone who just signed a life-changing contract,” Noble said. “But stress is stress, whether you’re a millionaire or you’re a guy working a minimum-wage job, stress affects all of us … So for him to have that stress gone, it really allowed him to be dialed in on a different level and get back to being who he is. The bottom line is Mitch loves hockey. And he’s a guy who wants to be counted on.”
More than ever, the Leafs are counting on him. Asked about Marner’s early-season performance on Monday in Calgary, where the Leafs were preparing for Tuesday’s game against the Flames, head coach Sheldon Keefe sounded like a man who expects big things from Toronto’s No. 16.
“I don’t know if anything in particular is standing out that hasn’t in previous years,” said Keefe. “He’s a very good player. He’s capable of playing big minutes, and he’s capable of putting up big points and producing at a high rate. So I wouldn’t say I’m surprised by anything.”
Keefe’s not surprised. And neither is Rielly, the Leafs defenceman who was leading all NHL skaters in total time on ice heading into Monday’s games. If the depth-challenged, top-heavy Leafs are going to arrive at their intended destination this season, it’s hardly a secret that they’ll need their best players to pull the bulk of the weight. As any star player will tell you: The more you play, the better you perform. The Leafs can only hope there’s enough fuel in the important tanks to chase down the success that’s long eluded them.