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“I bring this upon myself, because we show pictures of guys at BioSteel Camp and they’re mashing ropes and throwing stuff,” says Nichol, a one-time Toronto Maple Leafs strength and conditioning coach who now trains a stable of players including Mike Cammalleri, Wayne Simmonds and Tyler Seguin. “And kids are like, ‘That’s how I should train for hockey.’ But that’s one snippet of what we do at the very end of the summer. That’s totally not representative of how we train most of the time.

“If you looked at what we do here, 50% is rehab.”

If you had visited the gym a month ago, you would have seen players performing yoga or Pilates or simply getting a massage. You would have left believing hockey players are not that impressive and the commercials are lying to us. In reality, the biggest component of off-season training is rest. And plenty of it.

The NHL schedule consists of 82 gruelling games, not including the pre-season and playoffs. The sport is intensely physical and takes it toll on the body. By the end of the season, players hobble off the ice with an assortment of nagging injuries — some which may need surgery — and are physically drained. When Phil Kessel told reporters a year ago that he did not skate much in the summer, it was not a sign of lethargy.

After getting crosschecked in the back hundreds of times for the better part of eight months, some players cannot even lift themselves out of a chair. Forget lifting weights.

“I would say skinny-fat is a good description,” Toronto Maple Leafs forward Shawn Matthias says when asked what his body looked like after the season. “You look around the room at training camp and everyone’s big and strong and they’ve got abs. But by the end of the year, you’re so worn out. You definitely don’t have the muscle you once had.