Sport-Specific Contexts
Hockey players play hurt.
Not in the dramatic, press-box-story way — in the ordinary, unremarkable, nobody-is-surprised way. Blocked shots. Boards. Skate blades. The accumulated physical cost of a season on ice is significant, and the culture that surrounds it says: you dress if you can dress, you play through it, you don’t make it a story.
That toughness is real and it is genuinely admirable. It is also worth examining honestly, because not all of what gets called toughness in a hockey room actually serves the player.
Read this passage slowly.
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.
1 Corinthians 6:19 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Not a machine to be used until it breaks. Not an asset to be sacrificed for this season’s outcome. A temple — something with inherent dignity that deserves to be cared for because of what it is, not just because of what it can produce.
Hockey’s pain culture sometimes loses this. The pressure to dress when the medical staff has said otherwise. The culture of shame around protecting yourself from an injury that would cost the team. The player who hides a concussion because the alternative is admitting they can’t go — and in a hockey room, admitting that carries a specific social cost.
The distinction worth holding is between the discomfort of full physical competition — the soreness, the bruises, the body working at its limits in a contact sport — and the genuine injury that playing through will make significantly worse. The first is part of what makes hockey players exceptional. The second is not toughness. It is the sacrifice of the body that carries you through the rest of your life for the sake of a season.
Play hard. Play through discomfort. Get the medical attention your body needs when it needs it. Those are not in conflict. The toughest players are the ones who are still playing at the end of a career, not the ones whose bodies gave out because the culture said they had to.
The toughest players are the ones who are still playing at the end of a career, not the ones whose bodies gave out because the culture said they had to.
Is there something your body is telling you right now that you’ve been ignoring because of the culture in this room? What would it look like to get the care it needs?
This question may surface real medical situations. Know your program’s athletic training resources before this conversation.
Play hard. Play through discomfort. Get the care your body needs. All three.
This devotional is particularly relevant in hockey given the sport’s history with concussions. Deliver it with awareness of your program’s specific protocols and the specific situations in your room.