EDMONTON - In one play in one double-overtime game in June last year, Alec Martinez lived out the dream of every kid that’s ever picked up a hockey stick. Part of a three-on-two break, the Los Angeles Kings defenceman saw teammate Tyler Toffoli’s shot from the right wing thud off of Henrik Lundqvist’s extended leg. The puck found its way to Martinez’s stick and faster than you can say Stanley-Cup-game-winner, Martinez gave 18,173 fans at Staples Center a piece of hockey history. The 27-year-old was through-the-roof elated. His celebration broke down as: Stick flung upward, gloves in quick pursuit; he hopped on his skates and faced up the ice, where his teammates were pouring off of the bench and rushing to the New York Rangers’ end of the rink to celebrate with him. At this point, it appears that Martinez incorporated jazz hands into the moment. And fair enough when you’ve done something of that magnitude. Adrenalin takes over and that person shouldn’t be held responsible for what’s said or done. Which brings us to what was said. From that once-in-a-lifetime euphoric moment, Martinez stood on the ice with NBC’s Pierre McGuire and very calmly discussed the childhood dream fulfilled. “I just saw there was a loose puck in my own end and I just tried to get it into the forward’s hands. Toffoli had a great shot … and fortunately the rebound came to me and I was able to put it in,” he said. “It was a great play by them, I’m just the benefactor.” So much for adrenalin. McGuire asked him who spoke during the second intermission, after the Kings gave up a short-handed goal to go down in the game heading into the final period. “We just did it by committee,” Martinez said. “We’ve got great leadership in our locker-room and you know, we’ve been in that situation before. Obviously it’s not the situation you want going into the locker-room after the second but we came out and battled back.” Not exactly verbal jazz hands. I didn’t notice the way that hockey players spoke until I started interviewing them a decade ago. While you can’t paint everyone with the same brush, there’s a very common dialect in the language of the game that stretches across every level — a common hockeyspeak. It starts with the monotone. Every question — What allowed you to be so successful tonight? Is there a rivalry developing between these two teams? When a cat got onto the ice in the third period, why did you swing your stick at it? — does not elicit a change in intonation. The player often exhales at the start of his answer, and may look above the head of the person who asked the question. The word ‘obviously’ serves as punctuation. Questions about individual play are met with redirection to group contributions. (“Full credit to my linemates.”) Even group success is often deferred to either the opposing team being well-coached and hard-working. At the very least, the venue for the game is acknowledged by the visiting player. (“This is a tough barn to play in.”). Stock phrases everyone has heard a hundred times become fallback positions: “It’s a tough two points we got tonight. We really had to dig deep, grind it out … That’s a really well-coached group and hard-working team over there. Full credit to those guys … For us, we just have to keep working … There are no easy games in this league. If you don’t bring your A-game every night anyone can beat you … It’s gut check time. Every guy in this room has to look in the mirror … I liked our compete level/I thought our compete was lacking tonight … At the end of the day …”

I began to wonder if I was the only one who felt hockey’s white noise sounded like a saw going through the coach’s white board. How does it get handed down from one sweaty, post-game generation to the next? I’m not the only one who has noticed the pattern. A culture and a code “I did it in my first interview,” said Jason Strudwick, who came up through Edmonton’s minor hockey system before enjoying a 12-year NHL career that included 186 games with the Oilers. He went from interviewee to interviewer in 2012, hosting the Jason Strudwick Show on TSN 1260. “When you’re a young guy coming to the league, you’ve watched these interviews for years,” he said. “I remember watching all of these guys say basically nothing for years, and when I got there I was basically on the same plan. “You’re like, ‘Well if no one else is saying anything, I won’t say anything either.’ Even today there are very few NHL players that say what they think and that’s part of the game. Part of the dressing room code is that you do not share anything outside of the dressing room that you think is important.” That idea of keeping the dressing room a sanctuary and keeping the team clear of controversy is a big factor in what’s said and not said. “I think most guys stay safe in interviews. Nobody wants to say anything that ends up on another team’s bulletin board,” said Edmonton Oil Kings head coach Steve Hamilton, who grew up around the game. His father, Al, was the first Oilers player to have his jersey retired by the team. “As a young player you want to get through the interview and not come across sounding like a complete jackass,” Hamilton said. “Let’s say I say something that gets other teams fired up,” Strudwick said. “I’ve been in rooms and you’re looking for anything to get motivated. Say it’s a Tuesday night game in February against Columbus and there’s not that much excitement. If someone from Columbus says something you get all jacked up about it and it’s a way to generate some energy.” “I think to a certain degree you don’t want to be known as the guy who (has people say) ‘Wow, I can’t believe he said that,’” Hamilton said. “There’s a certain culture and code within hockey, where it’s probably reflective in interviews as well. Guys keep it between the lines for the most part.”

And Hamilton points out another factor. “You get asked a lot of the same questions over and over again too, so it kind of brings out the same responses. That’s probably one of the main reasons why you see that.” Is it the questions? In January, sports blog Grantland’s Bryan Curtis wrote about what he called “the most insipid thing you hear in locker rooms.” The piece centred around reporters’ relentless use of “talk about” as a means of asking someone a question in a news conference. What irks many about the Talk About is that it isn’t actually a question. A coach or player is told to talk about that third period/short-handed goal/fight after the puck drop and the door is thrown open for clichés to roll out. Hamilton perks up when the Talk About is mentioned. “I’m not a fan of it,” he said. “It’s not a real interview technique.” Hamilton began to notice it more in November, when Oilers goalie Ben Scrivens had a post-game scrum open with a “Talk about the game” question. Scrivens was in poor spirits after a loss and asked for a specific question instead. With his ears open to it, Hamilton was hearing it everywhere. “Certainly you do see it and you see it in national news, national media in television. It’s certainly far more prevalent than it was. “I don’t know if it’s a shortcut on the journalism side of it to just throw the microphone out there and get the sound bite you’re looking for, but I think it can put people in an awkward situation.” No one is immune to the Talk About. I was in Portland in 2013 when the Oil Kings beat the Winterhawks in Game 5 of the Western Hockey League final. Maybe a late start (8 p.m.) combined with an achingly tight deadline because of the overtime shut everyone’s brains off, but when the coaches and players sat down, everyone — myself included — used Talk About in the brief news conference. Listening back to it, it’s part incredible, part embarrassing drive-thru journalism. Converging with heroes “There has to be a term, or a definition,” I said as I sat with Dr. Kimberly Noels in her University of Alberta office last week, “for when a group of people start to speak the same way.” “It’s called convergence,” she said. Noels is an adjunct professor in the department of educational psychology at the U of A. Her focus of study is the social psychology of language, applied linguistics and cultural psychology and how they relate to intercultural relations and communication. “We have a tendency when we communicate with other people to converge to the same style (of speech) that they have,” she said. “That can be in things like how fast we speak or what kind of vocabulary choices we make.” Noels mentions that many people notice themselves adopting a British person’s accent after spending time with them. In the same way, young hockey players likely see their heroes on Hockey Night in Canada waxing not-so-poetic on grinding a game out, taking it one day at a time and staying even keel and use this stuff as a building block in their hockey-playing identity.

“In part it helps us to exchange information with other people,” Noels said. “The more similar we are, the easier it is to understand each other. It also helps with liking. The more similar we are to each other it creates a kind of unity. “It creates a common ground or understanding of what you’re talking about, but also who we are. We share this common interest or identity.” Of course, hockey players don’t speak this way all the time. When the cameras are shut off, the locker-room door closes and regular life begins, their real personalities come out. Noels said media availabilities could present an in-between time that anthropologists call liminal moments. These moments of transition are more often recognized at times such as graduating high school or university, getting married or going to a funeral. But they present themselves in everyday life, too. “We have to switch from our role at work to our role at home,” she said. “When we meet someone in the hallway and you’ve got your mind focused on your work and you see them and you have to shift momentarily to a friendlier orientation and then half a second later move back into work mode. “Sometimes we can use rituals at that moment, just, ‘Hi how are you doing? How about that game?’ Whatever. It can be kind of scripted speech. It’s sort of that moment of uncertainty where the rules are suspended because you’re in the middle of shifting to another rule setting. One set of norms to another.” Media training camp Strudwick played just 18 games over two seasons (between 1995 and 1997) for the New York Islanders, but something happened there that he still carries with him. “They gave us media training. I thought that was a great thing for the organization to do, to say, ‘Hey, this is how you handle those questions.’ That’s where I learned a lot of the skills that I have even now that I’ve carried on to the media.” While he was with the Oilers, Strudwick said he worked with former Oilers forward Zack Stortini to get him to open up more for the cameras and microphones. “Zack would never give them anything,” Strudwick said. “(I told him) ‘Zack, just tell them something. You don’t have to tell them your deepest wishes in life, but when they say, ‘Zack, how’s your speed?’ Say: ‘I’m working on my speed. We’ve got a great staff here, we have (director of high performance) Simon Bennett, we have a skill coach and we’re working on this to get it better. I’m excited to see this improvement I make. I can’t wait until next year to see how far I’ve come.’ “Now it’s going to go from a negative story to a positive one because hey, this guy is working his (butt) off.