Nick Schmaltz was born in Madison, Wis. He grew up in nearby Verona. The diet there is pretty simple.

“Yeah, cheese curds and burgers,” Schmaltz said, laughing.

As Schmaltz approaches his third NHL season, however, a drastically altered diet is one of several lifestyle changes the Coyotes training and medical staffs have asked him to make to help him achieve peak performance.

“I never ate vegetables but I’m trying to mix some in,” he said. “I still don’t like some but I’m working on it.”

To help in his exploration of the culinary arts, Schmaltz’s mom, Lisa, just bought him a cookbook. Schmaltz is also considering taking some cooking classes to get some basic ideas for recipes.

“I have never really cooked in my life,” he said. “It was always easier to go out or order something, but learning how to cook healthy food is a big step, and you can really focus on that in the summer.”

Diet is just one of several focal points for the Coyotes players this summer. While the season is in progress, most of them are in maintenance mode. Between the grueling travel, game and practice schedules, and the treatment players undergo just to stay in the lineup, the training and medical staffs don’t want to add more challenges.

“We want to keep them functional,” Coyotes strength and conditioning coach J.P. Major said. “The work we need to do to get them completely healthy just adds more stress on the system. Everything adds up and it becomes a cumulative overload.”

Throughout the season, however, Major, assistant strength and conditioning coach Curt Truhe, head athletic trainer Dave Zenobi, assistant athletic trainer Don Fuller, massage therapist Eric Ford, physical therapist Connor Ryan, the team doctors and others have compiled a long list of notes on each player, detailing their deficiencies, their strengths and their areas of concern.

“When the season ends, that’s when we can tackle some of the bigger boulders,” Major said. “We sit down with each player and we build a training calendar that helps me know where I want them to hit it a little harder and where I want them to pull back.

“The first couple weeks is really about just getting the body back in balance. You develop all these chronic, overuse injuries over the course of the season and we try to reel those back in; find a nice homeostasis for the body. In those first couple weeks after the season, they might play tennis or bike just to get their mind out of the gym while staying physically active, but from there, you can start to ramp it up.”

Major’s philosophy is simple and logical: Every player has his own needs. There is no one-size-fits-all training regimen, so the staff works diligently to craft a program that caters to those individualized needs. Sometimes those needs are for a rehabbing player such as Schmaltz, who only played 17 games for the Coyotes due to a meniscus injury. Sometimes, players are mostly healthy, but have areas of their body that aren’t performing at an optimal level. As an example, forward Josh Archibald came to Major after the season ended, complaining about some shoulder issues.

“He goes home to Nebraska to spend some time with his wife and family, so he asked to be put on a shoulder and core program,” Major said. “He didn’t want to do a ton in the gym yet, but he wanted to get fully healthy, so we built that program that also has some general wellness components built into it.

“Some of it is soft-tissue strategies where we’re trying to mobilize the shoulder by manipulating the tissue around it through general massage and movements. Stretching that, you might focus on opening the T-spine, which is the portion of the spine that plays a role in how your shoulders function, and then there’s a stability component so there might be three exercises for each.”

Alex Galchenyuk’s meniscectomy at the start of the season also created some individualized needs, so Major sat down for dinner a couple of weeks ago with Galchenyuk and his father, Alex Sr., with whom the player trains in the summer in Miami.

“We identified some things that he needed to change in his training programs,” Major said. “He can’t overload quite as much and he can’t direct the spinal load quite as much but there are other ways to load him, and over the last couple weeks we’re continuing to communicate and say, ‘This might be a more appropriate exercise.’”

Although the main focus right now is on his knee, Schmaltz said he also has lifelong issues the staff is helping correct.

“I’m naturally a little bit tight in my hips and lower back so I have been trying to work on freeing up the hips,” he said. “I think it could help me be a better skater and avoid the aches and pains throughout the season.”

Major uses a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to keep track of players’ training schedules as they scatter across the nation, the continent and the world. The schedule accounts for and adapts to vacation time, weddings that players must attend and every other sort of activity that might interrupt a steady training schedule.

Major also touches base with their personal trainers in whatever location they spend the summer. He speaks to each player four to five times each summer, he employs a digital platform with video to help them with training, and in the case of injured or new players, he’ll often pop in for a visit.

Last summer, he visited Derek Stepan in Minnesota to work out a training program with Stepan’s personal trainer. He also visited Antti Raanta in Finland and Niklas Hjalmarsson in Sweden to check on their rehab progress. While in Sweden, he also dropped in on defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

“Oliver had this thing where he wasn’t eating breakfast the last couple summers in Sweden and he wasn’t great at fueling immediately after training,” Major said. “I just showed him how easy it was to throw some eggs in a pan or blend up a shake. He has gotten a lot better at those types of things, and that kind of thing feeds into a player’s in-season habits.”

This summer, Major will again visit Raanta in Finland, and he plans to check in on Schmaltz’s rehab in Madison, while also consulting with Schmaltz’s trainer, Jim Snider, who is the strength coach at the University of Wisconsin.

Those touch points are just an example of why Coyotes president of hockey operations John Chayka retained Major, who was hired by previous GM Don Maloney.

“J.P. builds relationships with guys,” said Chayka, who started his own training facility before his NHL executive career began. “You have to understand the players, know them intimately to know how they feel about their game and what they need to do to get better. J.P is very progressive and very proactive. He does a lot of things that go unnoticed but they have given us some good results.

“He can’t be everywhere at once so we try to prioritize things, but he has great some concepts and ideas and I think he has been a competitive advantage for us.”

Major doesn’t think a lot has changed in his industry in the past five years, but he has noticed a stronger move toward individualization, one that he has always embraced.

“I don’t want to speak in generalizations but I’ve seen a lot of the ‘here’s-your-summer-playbook’ approach and it’s a kind of one-size-fits-all program,” he said. “That never really resonated with me. Some guys should stay in a phase longer because they are still adapting. Some need shorter phases or they’re older. Veterans don’t need to be heavily loaded all the time. We have become more individualized as time has gone on. We start to ID unique things a guy has to work on and, oftentimes, they are thinking the exact same things.”

One of the greatest challenges for training is diet. It’s easy to slip on vacation, or at a wedding or just because it’s summer.

“We always say you can’t out-train a bad diet,” Major said. “These guys are in great shape but if they’re not taking care of the fuel going in, they’re not going to get the performance coming out.”

The Coyotes consult with Paige Crawford, a senior project coordinator and performance dietitian at EXOS in Phoenix, who helps players craft meal plans.

In some cases, it’s easier than others.

“I love cooking,” said forward Vinnie Hinostroza, who will spend part of his summer in Arizona and part outside Chicago. “I go online and find different recipes all the time to broaden my horizons. The other day, I cooked a turkey burger with an egg in the middle of it and it was awesome.”

The players have a general idea of which foods to eat (vegetables, proteins, non-processed carbohydrates) and which to avoid (fried foods, white bread), but Hinostroza, like most of the players, underwent a food sensitivity test Thursday to determine which foods work best with his body and which ones to avoid.

“Fast food is evil,” Hinostroza said, laughing. “It’s just so easy on the weekend to go through the drive-thru at In-N-Out (Burger). That’s OK once in a while but I am kind of staying away from it. I love pizza, too, but I am trying to limit that or find healthier pizzas to eat.”

Since Schmaltz and Hinostroza played together for the Blackhawks as well, they have been spending a lot of time together this offseason. They did Pilates together for the first time Wednesday, and Hinostroza is slowly ramping up his workouts in other areas.

“I think I had a pretty good base but it’s about strengthening the base,” he said. “The legs can never be too strong, or the core, but you need flexibility, too. My main focus is gaining strength as a smaller guy without losing my speed.”

In the meantime, Hinostroza, his girlfriend and Schmaltz are trading off cooking meals.

“Chicken parm is my bread and butter,” Schmaltz said. “If I am cooking for somebody, I am probably cooking that because I know it’s going to be good, but I also like to make meat, veggie and rice stir fry.”

Hinostroza said his teammate is progressing in the kitchen.

“I’m proud of Schmaltzie,” he said. “Before Nick came here, he wasn’t cooking many meals and he would kind of shy away from too many veggies, but he’s really buying into trying new things and eating healthy. It’s fun to go out, but it’s awesome when you cook your own meal and you see it on your plate and you get to enjoy it.”

For now, Hinostroza said there is no mistaking who is the better cook.

“Me, for sure, but he is definitely learning,” Hinostroza said. “And now he’s got that cookbook his mom gave him. It’s a really good cookbook. Schmaltzie’s got a future.”

(Photo: Norm Hall / Getty Images)