Yet during my tryout with the New York Islanders, it was nearly impossible to interact with the “fringe” NHLers. I absolutely couldn’t feel normal around the bubble guys who knew they were fighting for a spot, guys who probably felt threatened by each and every new draft pick or tryout kid that dared cross their path. They’re like piranhas ready to snap.

Once again, the established guys were gold: Bill Guerin was easily the nicest guy in the room. Ruslan Fedetenko was so smiley and happy, some family should adopt him as a pet. And Mike Comrie was soft-spoken, polite, and welcoming. 

Apparently, no rookie said anything funny to any of those guys the whole time we were around each other. Guerin? He’d disagree. But then, what more does he have to prove? He’s allowed to laugh at whatever he wants.

I like the competitiveness in that stone-faced stoicism, sure. Keep your spot if you can. But at the same time, it reeks of lacking confidence.

What sucks for the undrafted guys, is that fighting against those attitudes does make it harder to crack the big league.

A guy like Taylor Hall? He’ll have no problem. He’s a name, he’s “established,” and someone who’s going to be around regardless. There’s no point in not engaging him, trying to keep him down, or excluding him from anything. He’s going to stick at some point, and that’s all there is to it.

But when battling somewhat-threatening newbies, social repression does serve a purpose.

You just can’t play like yourself when you’re distracted, and it’s awfully frickin’ distracting when you can’t even have normal conversation with a portion of the team, let alone get any help from them. There’s just an awkwardness that can make even the most chest-puffed rookie question himself.

I dealt with this in summer hockey for years. I was intimidated playing with a group of talented (as in, current-NHL-all-star talented) young players on the rise that was anchored by a few older vets. It went in three stages for me:

A) They were a-holes because I wasn’t good enough to play with them. (And I wasn’t)

B) They were awesome to me, called me to hang out and fully engaged me once I got good enough to play with them, but not good enough to threaten them.

C) A few guys reverted back to treating me less well once we were in the same leagues and competitive for spots.

So next time, when you can’t figure out why some kid with so much talent just can’t crack the big club ... give it a second thought. Maybe he’s been locked out. It happens all too often, and it’s a reality — fitting in, sadly, is important.

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