Cards, binging and napping: Passing time on a team flight

These days, Sidney Crosby doesn’t even try to fight it.

No matter what he does, it’s going to happen and happen fast.

When Crosby gets on the team plane to travel to away games, a countdown begins.

“I’m like, the second after I get in my seat after practice, if we’re going somewhere – I’m gone,” the Pittsburgh Penguins captain said. “Anytime I get on a plane, I’m like automatically out cold. I don’t know if it’s from all the bus travel in juniors, or if when I get on the plane it’s just because you’re not on your phone as much, but I end up just falling asleep.”

As a professional athlete, there’s no escaping the frequent travel inherent to the job.

Naturally, all that travel generates a considerable amount of downtime, which players across all sports and teams choose to utilize differently.

On the Penguins, Crosby was one of a handful of players, including winger Drew O’Connor, who might consider themselves as professional nappers on the plane.

So what do others on the team usually do in-flight?

“I catch up on TV shows,” said forward Noel Acciari. “I like to sample everything. The stuff my wife doesn’t like to watch – I make sure I watch those. For me, I’m relaxing and easing, losing myself in a TV show, movie or something like that.”

Along with the nappers, Acciari was one of several who fell into another predictable category of killing time: those who binge-watch movies and TV shows.

Defenseman Ryan Graves does not have Crosby’s talent for rapidly falling asleep on flights.

In fact, he struggles to fall asleep in-flight at all.

This year, Graves frequently sits next to Acciari on the plane.

“We’re a good match,” Graves said. “We’ll sit down, have a five-minute chat and go to our business. Usually, I typically keep to myself. If it’s a long trip, I’ll get up and socialize. You kind of get stir crazy. But usually when I get on the plane, I’ll watch my shifts from the last game. I’ll take 20 minutes, and then I’ll either watch a show or I’ll read.

“I can’t sleep on the plane. You watch a lot of shows, and you usually get through a few books each year just trying to keep yourself busy.”

Most of the Penguins players approached regarding their preferred method of killing time during flights mentioned the a handful of teammates known to be card sharks.

Goalie Alex Nedeljkovic, defenseman Marcus Pettersson plus forwards Michael Bunting and Bryan Rust all sit together on flights and from the moment they’re in their seats until it’s time to get off the plane, they play cards.

“Shnarps” is the game, and it’s played nonstop with no exceptions.

“It’s non-negotiable – if you’re at the table, you’re committed to the table, you can’t leave the table,” Nedeljkovic said. “If you leave the table, you get banished.”

Alterations to the Penguins roster the past few seasons have forced a changing of the guard upon the card sharks, as Brian Dumoulin, Chad Ruhwedel and Jake Guentzel used to occupy places at the table along with Rust.

But Rust has found eager participants in Pettersson, Nedeljkovic and Bunting, all of whom embrace the unrelenting pace of play and mafia-style rules of membership.

“As soon as all four guys are on, we start slinging ‘em and once we touch down, we stop,” Rust said. “We actually really look forward to it. Basically, if you leave, you leave in a box – you’re not coming back.”

Suffice to say, the card table and its accompanying banter serves as a welcomed source of amusement for the rest of the team.

“I sit next to (forward Anthony) Beauvillier, so we’re always talking to each other,” said defenseman Matt Grzelcyk. “We’re not playing cards, but we’re listening to the conversation and kind of feeding off of that, because there’s a lot of funny things that go on. It’s nice to have that right behind us – a little standup comedy.”

Unsprisingly, not everyone views the constant flying as leisure time.

Coach Mike Sullivan and his assistants tend to keep a business-like approach.

While his players pass the time in a multitude of ways, he and his staff try to use it productively.

“What we do as coaches a lot of time is work,” Sullivan said. “We spend a lot of time on our laptops. We’re watching game film, we’re breaking down our team game, we’re trying to assess our players and how we can help them as individuals.

“I look at a lot of just our overall team game, in all three zones, on both sides of the puck. There’s a lot of crossover in what we do so that we can have collaboration in what we see and sharing insights – things of that nature. That’s the majority of the time we spend in the air.”