“You’re only a work-ethic away from the NHL.”  Those are the words of one of the most experienced voices in hockey.

Chuck Grillo (Pittsburgh Penguins and Minnesota Hockey Schools) has spent a lifetime helping coaches and players chase their dreams, and he knows first-hand there isn’t much difference between many who get to the NHL and some who don’t.

However, this article isn’t about getting to the NHL — or to college hockey, to the high school varsity, or getting anywhere.  It’s about enjoying hockey and being the best you can be — two ways of saying the same thing.  Grillo’s advice is simple and basic: the more you invest, the more you’ll get back out of the sport.

Fun, in this case, doesn’t refer to entertainment like watching a movie.  Enjoyment in sports comes from succeeding at something that was difficult before: beating a tough opponent 1-on-1, when it might have seemed impossible last year; skating around corners at high speed when you couldn’t beat a turtle a week ago; scoring on a quick shot to the top shelf, when you could hardly lift the puck at the start of the season.

The reality of hockey is this: while every young player is fortunate to receive things from parents on a silver platter, nothing on a platter will make you a hockey player.  Parents — God love ‘em — would like to help you succeed, but it’s not their choice.

Enjoyment in hockey is directly related to the amount of time and energy you commit to improvement.  It certainly doesn’t need to be drudgery.  But to really enjoy this game, you should spend time at the outside rink, shoot pucks, stickhandle, and practice skating — play pickup hockey or keep-away with friends.

Rink sense, creativity, and competitive instincts are not inherited, and the more you scrimmage, the smarter you’ll be in competition.  The thrill of scoring goals is like none other — especially after a great move to beat the D or a quick shot over the shoulder of the goalkeeper.  Watch any player after a beautiful goal: even the calmest celebration has an instant of wild excitement — like, “Wow.  Did I really do that?!”

Alexander Ovechkin practically jumps through the glass after a highlight goal — and he scores a lot of them.  But he calms down quickly and acts like he’s been doing this in the NHL for years. He doesn’t fool anyone, though.  His youthful joy is too obvious, and it’s this thrill that pushes him to work extra hard on his skills.

When he attacks the offensive zone, his hands and feet are moving so fast the defenseman can hardly follow.  You can just see the D thinking, “OK, I know I shouldn’t be watching the puck. Concentrate on the body. Concentrate on the body. Concentrate — oh, (bleep).  He beat me again.”  If not with a quick move around the D, Ovechkin releases his shot so quickly between the defenseman’s legs, the goalkeeper has no time to react.

By the way, this quick-release shot — hands and feet moving 100 miles an hour — using the D as a screen when he thinks you might go around him — releasing the shot, almost as part of the stick-handling movement — this is a typical European/Russian thing.  You’d see it every day over there, and I always wonder: is this from a special Eur-Asian gene?  Or, is this something their coaches teach and the kids practice their whole life?

Here’s another phenomenon you’ll see at every level of hockey — another lesson to store in the memory bank — goal-scorers are so focused on scoring in practice that goalies soon learn to hate them.  Other players might skate hard, and do everything they’re told, but they often shoot as though it means less than the skating drill.  Not the goal-scorers.  They get shots off in impossible situations — even if they fall and have to shoot from their knees.  They never finish a drill without a quality shot, because they love scoring so much.

That’s the kind of fun it should be to practice skating, too, but hockey coaches have found ways to make it seem like torture.  “OK,” they holler.  “Put the pucks in the net; we’re going to skate the next 40 minutes.”

No one is thinking, “Great. This’ll be fun.”  So we need to change that and make sure skating practice is seen as a perfect opportunity to get better.  It doesn’t have to be drudgery, of course, when you think of how much fun it is to fly around the ice faster than anyone else — to corner at full speed in perfect control.

I remember running a skating practice with the Gophers a generation ago.  Standing next to Paul Ostby, the goalie coach, we were both watching Tom Chorske skate around a corner so fast it practically took our breath away.  The noise was deafening, as he cut the ice with each stride.

“Just once,” Ostby said. “It’d be incredible to do that just once.”

This is the fun of hockey.  No one needs a trophy.  We don’t need structured games with referees, scoreboards, Zamboni’s, and people in the stands.  I’m sure some of the most exciting moments of Tom Chorke’s career came in pickup games on Lake of the Isles — when he flew down the ice, faked inside, and went around the D to score.

The lesson to remember is that Chorske — like every great player — spent a lifetime at the outside rink — skating, shooting, scrimmaging, having fun.  He invested time and energy and was rewarded with the enjoyment of hockey.

Will the investment always be as much fun as beating the D with a highlight move?  Of course not.  Even though Ostby and I had fun watching Chorske skate that day, I doubt that Tom would list that particular workout as one of the truly great memories of his life.  It was hard work.

It can — and will be really tough at times, if you want to be as good as Chorske.  When you get older and spend two hours working on leg strength in the weight room, you know the investment will pay great dividends, but it can be a huge price some days when your friends are out on the speed boat.

For youth hockey players, the dryland workouts should never be this extreme, because it’s not possible to gain that kind of strength anyway at a young age.  However, a twenty-minute dryland workout after skating will help every player — no matter how young — develop good habits of skating posture and strength that will show up the next week on the ice.  I often say to a group that has just finished their dryland workout, “You’re better skaters right now than you were an hour ago.”

It’s a simple equation: the more you put in, the more you get out.  Invest a lot and the game will be more enjoyable.

And, as Chuck Grillo would say, “If you have big dreams, you better have a huge work-ethic.”