“Travel is a major part of professional sports, and can be an exhausting and draining experience.

I’ve always loved travelling without a team, because what’s not to love? You get that mall-style Chinese food, read a book, listen to music, take a nap, and have a few pints. It’s a near perfect lazy day. You just need to learn how to cope with the stresses so the day goes smoothly – show up early, know your gate, pack light and don’t pay attention to anything beyond that.

With a team, however, you’re in a stuffy suit. You generally can’t have a beer (especially on the way to a city you play in the next night). You’re surrounded by your idiot teammates. And worst of all, coaches are staring at you thinking (and occasionally saying) “What’s he laughing at? If I turned the puck over four times in the neutral zone yesterday, I certainly wouldn’t be so happy.”

And something always seems to go wrong. A smooth travel day is a gift from above when you have 30 people connecting with more gear than a travelling circus, needs buses, and has to wait for arenas to be opened at 3 a.m. to drop off the equipment.

I asked some pros, past and present, to relate an example of just how bad team travel can be:

Bryan Trottier (New York Islanders, Pittsburgh): “In junior, our bus broke down between Flin-Flon and Moose Jaw, no heat, nothing. This was the old days before cell phones. It’s minus-30 out, and we’re in the middle of nowhere. Our trainer literally has to hitchhike to get somewhere where he could find help. The only reason we survived was because it’s such a long drive that we had all brought sleeping bags, so we bundled up like crazy. Of course, once someone came out and fixed the bus, there we just carried on like it wasn’t going to happen again. It did.”

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