He added: “I’m not sure I’m setting a trend. It’s just that a lot more teams are doing it. Before, I’d say maybe 10 years ago, all players seemed to want to touch the ice on a morning of a game that night. Now some teams will be doing stretching or video in the morning. We’ve sort of changed the dynamics of preparation for a game day.”

Islanders Coach Jack Capuano gives all players the option of skating on the morning before a game. This month, Capuano decided to move morning skates to the team’s practice complex in Syosset, N.Y., from Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the Islanders’ new arena. The Islanders had been staying in a hotel near the arena before games. There was a lot of time to kill.

“If a guy wants to go out in a tracksuit, if a guy wants to go out and feel the puck for five minutes, if our goalie wants to go out for a few minutes, I’m not going to stop him,” Capuano said. “Obviously, we know that rest is crucial. We want to be off our legs. We want to be fresh as you move through the season. But I’m not going to tell a guy, ‘You can’t go on,’ unless I feel it’s necessary, in that he’s tired or struggling a little bit.”

Capuano said some players did not want to change routines, but he added, in reference to the optional morning skates, “There have been less and less and less and less who have gone on — for sure.”

John Hynes, in his first season as the Devils’ head coach, already knows that rest and recovery are paramount for N.H.L. teams, who play 82 games over six months — even before the Stanley Cup playoffs.

After ending a four-game trip last Saturday with a victory over the Arizona Coyotes, the Devils practiced hard Monday and skated Tuesday before hosting Calgary, but only because they had Sunday off.

“If the guys are coming off a tough trip or back-to-back games, you want to let guys rest and recover more than you want to have guys get on the ice and skate,” Hynes said. “If you haven’t had a lot of practice time, then you may want to use it to keep the guys sharp and keep them going. For the most part, we keep them very limited.”