‘How do I boil the water?’ The cooking adventures of young NHL players

Brett Harrison felt like making chicken and pasta for a pregame meal, which makes him like most professional hockey players.

But the first-year pro had a problem. 

Mason Lohrei, Harrison’s roommate at the time early last season with the AHL Providence Bruins, was watching TV on the couch. Harrison told Lohrei about his plan. Lohrei approved.

Then the 20-year-old Harrison had a question.

“How do I make the pasta?” Harrison asked his roommate.

“Boil the water,” Lohrei answered. “Put it in the water.”

“How,” Harrison responded, “do I boil the water?”

Crawling to walking

NHL teams are paying attention to nutrition. The Minnesota Wild have an oatmeal bar where players can customize their bowls with berries, honey and nuts. Bruins players eat lunch at their practice rink after the morning skate and leave with takeout containers for post-nap feeding.

In particular, young players, whose caloric needs are often higher than those of veterans, cannot do without good and regular fueling. It can mean the difference between making it to the NHL or not.

“It’s a huge part for every team now,” Florida Panthers general manager Bill Zito said of proper nutrition for up-and-comers. “How and when and where you fuel the body is vital.”

In some ways, the transition from amateur to pro hockey is seamless. Players play games, practice, train and sleep the same way for the New York Rangers, for example, as they did when they were in college or junior.

But when it comes to cooking, players can feel like they’ve been chucked into the deep end of the pool. Even though teams provide pre- and post-skate spreads, players are on their own when they leave the rink — sometimes for the first time in their lives.

Consider that Harrison, a 2021 third-round pick of the Boston Bruins from London, Ontario, played in the OHL for parts of three seasons. Harrison lived with billet families when he played for the Oshawa Generals and Windsor Spitfires.

“Pretty much cooking me three meals a day,” Harrison said. “I didn’t have to do too much there.”

Fellow Bruins prospect Trevor Kuntar played at Boston College for three seasons. Kuntar, a 2020 third-round pick, was known in the BC dining halls as the guy who ate chicken and rice every day.

But unlike Harrison, Kuntar grew up as a regular cook under the watch of his father, Les. Now, as a second-year pro, Kuntar is practically on kitchen autopilot: eggs or overnight oats for breakfast, burritos for lunch, chicken and rice or salmon and mashed sweet potatoes for dinner.

Kuntar is proof that it can be done. But players who never bought groceries, prepped ingredients and cooked meals as teenagers can feel like fish out of water as first-year pros. There are only so many times you can hit Chipotle.

“A lot of young guys, it’s immaturity,” said the Panthers’ A.J. Greer. “You just have to put the effort in to cook. Because it’s easy to go pick up something and keep eating out. Some guys do it.”

“Like Jake DeBrusk,” Greer continued, busting his ex-teammate’s chops. “I don’t even know how old he is — 29, 30? I don’t know if he’s cooked a homemade meal in the last 10 years.”

With the ease of services such as DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats, it’s never been simpler for players to order their favorite meals. But eating out is pricey, and it’s hard to tell what’s in food you don’t make yourself.

Consider the following ingredients: potassium lactate, sodium diacetate, tapioca dextrin and potassium sorbate, which are listed on the box of a chicken nugget meal kit. The product is made by a brand that Bruins nutritionist Julie Nicoletti once learned was a staple of a former prospect’s rotation: Lunchables.

“A lot of young kids don’t know how to do it,” said the Bruins’ Hampus Lindholm. “So they go back and order McDonald’s.”

Lindholm, who is from Helsingborg, Sweden, was drafted No. 6 by the Anaheim Ducks in 2012. In 2012-13, an 18-year-old Lindholm played for the Norfolk Admirals, Anaheim’s then-AHL affiliate. When one of his young roommates celebrated a birthday, Lindholm baked a cake.

“They were so mind-blown that I made that from scratch,” Lindholm recalled of his teammates. “It’s so normal where I grew up — cooking and baking.”

What also was normal in Sweden was the small size of the average grocery store chicken breast. When Lindholm went to the poultry section in Norfolk, the breasts were so big the Swede thought they were using different chickens.

Young players, it seems, can learn something new at the supermarket.

Cooking for others

When Harrison, Lohrei and fellow roommate Frédéric Brunet moved in to their Providence apartment last season, one of their first visits was to Target. The first-year pros needed pots, pans, utensils, plates and cups.

After some early turbulence, the roommates settled on a system. Lohrei, who grew up as mother Teri Weiss’ sous chef, was in charge of protein. Brunet assembled salads. Once Harrison mastered how to boil water, he handled pasta and rice.

Tuesday was taco night. The roommates chopped and sautéed onions and peppers, then added chicken or ground turkey to the pan. They customized their dishes with guacamole and sour cream.

Harrison was especially excited when Lohrei made turkey burgers. Harrison insisted on guacamole and peppercorn dressing.

Lohrei liked chicken cutlets and penne in a spicy vodka sauce. He also looked forward to ground turkey bowls with rice, spinach, avocado and Harrison’s favorite peppercorn dressing.

It may have been harder had the players been living alone. But cooking for friends helped Brunet, Harrison and Lohrei gain their kitchen footing.

“Now he’s good,” Lohrei said of Harrison, the formerly clueless cook. “He’s got it down now. He’s making a lot more than just noodles.”

The company of others goes a long way.

Helping hands

Pavel Zacha was 12 years old when he moved to Liberec, about three hours north of his hometown of Velké Meziříčí in Czechia. His father, also named Pavel, moved with him. While Zacha trained, practiced and played, his dad was busy in the kitchen.

Father and son, however, went their separate ways when Zacha played for the OHL’s Sarnia Sting as a 17-year-old. Zacha’s billet family was Danish. They did not make the meals his father used to cook.

“I wasn’t used to eating burgers three times a week,” Zacha said.

Zacha became close with teammate Patrick White, who lived with the same family. White enjoyed being in the kitchen and eventually became in charge of breakfast.

“He was good. He actually tried to do sometimes healthy,” Zacha said. “He even showed me how to turn on a dishwasher and dryer.”

By the time the New Jersey Devils drafted Zacha at No. 6 in 2015, he was ready to live by himself. Still, the 19-year-old Zacha was no Julia Child.

One night, on mother Ilona’s counsel, Zacha put chicken and potatoes into a glass dish and popped it into his oven. Zacha then went to watch TV.

The next thing he heard was the smoke alarm.

Zacha didn’t know how to turn it off. All he could do was open the windows and wait for the smoke to exit his apartment. The chicken and potatoes could not be saved.

“It was bad. I went for dinner,” Zacha said. “It wasn’t the best. I gave up for like a week of cooking. Then I tried again.”

That season, Zacha had the good fortune of living two floors below teammate Vern Fiddler. By then, the 36-year-old Fiddler had played more than 800 NHL games. The veteran showed the rookie how to shop, cook and clean up, among other things.

“Your first year is the hardest,” Zacha said. “But if you have good influences, it makes it easier.”

Some of the same young players who know exactly where to find the puck are lost in the kitchen. But they cannot afford to be without their bearings for long.

“Definitely an adjustment I had to make and continue to learn,” said 21-year-old Bruins prospect Ryan Mast. “But hockey player or not, you’ve got to learn how to feed yourself.”

(Top photo of prospects in a training session with a nutritionist courtesy of the Bruins, and photo of pasta cooking: Stefano Guidi / Getty Images)