But don’t just lazily run back the same joints. Add one or two new tunes per week. Mix the classic with the current, Stewart advises. “My favourite playlist was one I got from Greg Campbell, the DJ Danny D mix they used to have on Z103.5 FM in Toronto,” he says. “If I knew I was gonna be gone longer than 15 minutes out of the room, I would just put that playlist on, and the boys would love it. Especially the European players.”
Stewart fondly recalls some heated pre-NHL camp speaker battles involving himself, brother Chris Stewart, Devante Smith-Pelly, Wayne Simmonds, Seguin and Michael del Zotto — a.k.a., DJ MDZ — during summer workout sessions guided by Toronto-based trainer Matt Nichol. A core group of players wanted hard beats and rhymes all day long, “but Del Zotto, who’s a DJ, would be playing his new mixes and some heavy, heavy dance,” Stewart says. “So we literally had to have a concession where it was, ‘Okay, you play two songs, this guy plays two songs.’ You’re there for two hours, almost worrying more about the music than your workout.”
For a select few, however, silence can be golden.
Colby Armstrong had spent his life in loud locker rooms, but it took until his final NHL season, with the 2012–13 Montreal Canadiens, to see a non-DJ assume the control their starting goalie did. “I was sort of amazed to see that Carey Price would switch up the tunes or shut the music off at a certain time before the game to dial it in sometimes,” Armstrong chuckles. “Never saw a goalie ever do that. Most sit in their own world. He is chill, though. Didn’t matter. Just got up, handled the DJ duties at times, and it was nothing.”
In Philadelphia, it is everything. Jakub Voracek is entering his 10th season with the Flyers, and it is with dusty, reluctant fingers that he’s loosening his control of the play button. “I absolutely hate modern music,” Voracek told Spittin’ Chiclets in November 2019. The 31-year-old Czech loves him some Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Led Zeppelin. Proficient in air guitar, Voracek caught AC/DC live in Berlin (“With Brian Johnson!”) and has seen Springsteen 15 times, twice on Broadway. “I play my rock ’n’ roll after meetings, and I blast it all the way up,” Voracek said. He estimates that 70 out of 82 games the final song he fires up is Springsteen’s “Atlantic City.” “The live version, MTV Plugged — that one’s the best version.”
