hockey writing appreciation club part ii (part i here) hi team. let's support good sportswriting, whether with clicks or subscriptions! here are some more of my favorite articles i've read in the past little bit! i'll keep sharing articles every few weeks or so, and i always welcome recommendations if you have them as well!!

A mysterious illness halted his promising NHL career. Eight years later, hope and a comeback 🔒 Hodgson didn’t think about the mysterious illness that caused him to walk away from the game. Or the tests for lung cancer, brain cancer and liver cancer that he’d endured in a fruitless quest to figure out what was making him sick. He wasn’t thinking about the months of on-ice work and yoga and a grueling weight-loss regimen that led him to this point. He wasn’t even feeling the blunt soreness of the broken rib he had sustained in his first professional game after his long layoff. All he was thinking about was the gimme pass he’d just received. “If I hadn’t scored on that one,” Hodgson joked, “I might’ve had to shut it down.”

How the NHL rookie class has handled life on and off the ice Confidence becomes more than just a buzzword: It's a mantra. The rookies, after all, have to believe they belong -- even among the future Hall of Famers. "It's not like the guys you're playing against are not human, you know what I mean?" Carlsson said. "You realize you can be a good player here too, and you don't have to be worried that you're not going to make it. If you have confidence out there, you're going to be fine."

For players on the roster fringe, every day in the NHL is a treasure — and a challenge 🔒 Confidence is a funny thing. Even superstars routinely lose theirs during a stretch of what qualifies as mediocrity by their impossible standards. Hang around the game long enough and you’ll lose track of how many times you hear a player talk about just needing to “see the puck in the back of the net” to get himself going again. Never mind that he’s been the best player on the ice at every level. Never mind that he’s scored hundreds of goals in the NHL. Never mind that he’s been so good for so long that he’s paid massive sums of money and showered with love and affection every night. Even the toughest players can spiral mentally. Hockey’s hard, and the pressure’s high.

Nils Hoglander on growing up in a tiny village, why he stays on the ice after practice and his 'hidden talent' Is it harder to shoot a moose or stay in the NHL? A hint is a never-satisfied 5-foot-9, 185 pounds of bowling ball persistence and last player off the practice ice on Tuesday. “I guess I have to say hockey is the hardest,” said Hoglander. “But if you’ve never been out in the forest or anything, it’s kind of hard to know what to do. If you bring Petey (Elias Pettersson) he would have no idea what to do, he’s a city boy.”

'Open people's eyes': How the NHL's evolved in the decade of data The chemist's cell phone rings. He finds a quiet area of the lab to take the call. Hockey Hall of Fame forward Ron Francis is on the line. It's the 2014-15 season, Francis' first as general manager of the small-market Carolina Hurricanes. Francis asks the chemist - who's assumed a part-time consultant role with the NHL team - about a few players. How would you rank them? The call is short. The chemist slides his phone into his pocket, slips his gloves on, and walks to his work station. Back to the day job for Eric Tulsky.

After 1,400 games and counting, Alex Ovechkin still doesn’t break 🔒 When Alex Ovechkin was a rookie, his teammates were concerned he might have a heart attack. The Washington Capitals forward, who was 20 when he played his first NHL game in 2005, has always done things his own way. Back then, that meant a pregame routine of three Red Bulls. When the rest of his teammates were drinking Gatorade or water between periods, Ovechkin was downing soda.

Why a first-round pick walked away from the NHL — and found peace doing odd jobs 🔒 Over the course of his 10-year career, Koekkoek admits he paid far too much attention to external noise. He read negative articles about his play. He paid attention to critics on social media. And he put too much stock into various coaches who didn’t believe in him. “I lost that self-value that someone believed in me to take me in the first round,” he said. “I wish I could have kept my swagger.”