Palo takes things to next level

[jRuutu 2,464]

 

There comes a time in every player´s career where it´s right to ask: is whatever I´m doing good enough? Every week I show up to practice and sometimes I even do something on my own later, like shoot the puck around in my garage, but now as I´m not a young guy anymore, I have been thinking about these things. A lot of faith was put on me when I was drafted, first round and all that, despite being the guy who every girl wants to look like and every guy wants to be with, I still have not taken those last few steps where I can say: I´m a star in this league.

 

More fuel to the fire came when I was chatting with Gritty and Louth in group chat, apparently, both have either already invested in an elite level training program or are planning to do so. Basically, the idea is to give the player a customized plan on what to do every day and that way the player is able to improve exactly the areas he wants, could be skating, explosiveness, stick handling etc etc.

 

Personally, I have never done anything like that, I don´t really have the money since I spend most of my dough on Gucci loafers and velvet bathrobes. Still, I would be lying if I said that I was not intrigued about the possibility to take those mentioned few steps somehow. I looked into it and it turns out that sacrificing something could be a decent alternative, I could hopefully find a way to please the gods and boom - all of a sudden I hit the post and puck goes in instead of bouncing into the corner! That would be huge on its own.

 

 

I got few ideas on what to do, first thing is doing the traditional Finnish sacrifice: burning your own sauna to the ground. That is supposed to make mother nature calm down, which might not translate into hockey so well, but worth a try. Another one is the Saskatoonian way: shaving your mullet. The idea behind that is showing to hockey gods that you are humble and willing to do whatever it takes.

 

I have not done either yet, but I´m actually traveling to Finland on next Monday to see my family back home, what makes the trip worth mentioning is the fact that I have a summer home in Finland that has a sauna! The burning of sauna is not what worries me, it´s the mullet one. My hair grows slowly and even now the mullet is not as impressive as it could be, so I´m not sure if I actually go through with it. Need to think about it for a bit, got a couple of days before I´m in Finland.

 

Would be really cool to have a career year next year though, if I don´t do the sacrifices, that could be a major ´what if´ hanging out all year - especially if my individual performances are up and down.