Your performance is only part of what you bring to a team.
On Monday, I shared the first of the three biggest lessons I learned during a lifetime in hockey.
After two years of junior hockey, four years of Division I, nearly 500 professional games, and a decade spent working my way from the minors to the NHL, I saw one trait in almost every player who built a successful career:
They were resilient.
They kept showing up, regardless of how they felt or what happened the day before.
Today, I want to share the second lesson:
Make yourself valuable.
I first began to understand this in 2006 when I walked into the Ottawa Senators locker room for training camp.
I had just signed an NHL contract after my senior year at UMass Lowell, but I was still a kid.
I had no idea what it truly meant to be a professional.
I remember looking around that locker room and watching how these men carried themselves.
Players were arriving at the rink far earlier than I expected. Some were foam rolling, stretching, doing band work, riding the bike, lifting weights, and even performing sprints before practice.
I couldn’t comprehend it.
I was so worried about becoming fatigued that I wanted to conserve every ounce of energy for the practice ahead.
Meanwhile, these guys were already working.
But it wasn’t only their preparation that stood out.
It was the way they interacted with the trainers, coaches, staff members, and one another.
Not everybody was nice to me. I was an unknown rookie trying to take someone’s job.
But a few veterans took me under their wing. They asked how I was doing, answered my questions, and showed me how a professional was supposed to carry himself.
Years later, when I became a veteran with the Providence Bruins, the responsibility shifted to me.
Now I was expected to help younger players understand how to train, recover, eat properly, make good decisions, and conduct themselves as professionals.
That’s when the full lesson became clear:
Being valuable to a hockey team is about far more than what happens during your shifts.
Your performance matters. Of course it does.
But so does the way you treat your teammates.
The way you communicate with your coaches.
The way you respond after a bad game.
The work you do when practice is over.
The way you represent the organization in the community.
I was never perfect. I made plenty of mistakes throughout my career.
But I tried to be a good teammate. I tried to bring people together, look coaches in the eye, connect with the fans, help in the community, and do whatever the organization needed from me.
Those things made me more than a player with a certain number of goals, assists, fights, or penalty minutes.
They helped make me the complete package.
And that matters when a coach is making a final roster decision.
Maybe you and another player are equal on the ice.
Maybe the other player is even slightly more talented.
But if you are dependable, coachable, respected in the locker room, willing to do the extra work, and capable of making everyone around you better, you bring something that cannot always be measured on a stat sheet.
You raise your stock.
You give the organization more reasons to keep you.
You can begin building that value today.
Try to have one meaningful conversation with every player on your team, including the teammates you don’t naturally connect with.
You don’t need to become the loudest person in the room.
Just become someone who looks people in the eye, treats them with respect, and helps connect the locker room.
Then put in the extra work.
When practice ends, spend a few more minutes working on your hands. Take your Wraparound and Puckaround onto the concrete, into the concourse, or out onto the driveway.
The Wraparound protects your stick while the Puckaround gives you the realistic feel of an ice hockey puck, allowing you to keep improving long after you leave the ice.
Get your Wraparound and Puckaround and start doing the extra work.
People notice the player who stays late.
They notice the player who helps a teammate.
They notice the player who brings more to the organization than personal statistics.
Become that player.
Because talent may help you enter the locker room.
Your value is what helps you stay there.
On Friday, I’ll share the third and final lesson I learned during my hockey career.
It has to do with the mentality required to win—not only during games, but in practice, in the weight room, throughout your life, and most importantly, inside your own mind.
Because long before you win on the scoreboard, there is another battle that must be won first.
I’ll tell you about it Friday.
Bobby Robins, savage motivator, NHL Alum, Writer for Wraparound
P.S. The best players don’t wait for someone to tell them to do more. They find the work, take responsibility, and make themselves impossible to overlook.
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