NEW YORK — Major league baseball teams don’t do it. Neither do NFL or CFL football teams.
And, increasingly, NBA basketball teams have stopped doing it.
But for reasons that seem to have as much do with habit and tradition as anything else, NHL hockey teams continue to drag their players out of bed early in the morning of a game day and haul them down to the rink for what is referred to as "the morning skate."
The players suit up, skate around in circles for as little as 15 or 20 minutes — these things are so casual a lot of teams don’t even have their head coach on the ice — and then the players get undressed, talk to the media and either head back to their homes or back to the hotel.