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<\/p>\nTORONTO \u2014 Craig Berube stood in front of a group of reporters with plenty on his mind.<\/p>\n
It was late November and Berube\u2019s Toronto Maple Leafs had fallen from a team with Stanley Cup aspirations to the bottom of the NHL\u2019s Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all feel it,\u201d the coach said after practice. \u201cEveryone has to grind right now. It\u2019s a grind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two months later to the day, Berube\u2019s team was again slipping. He saw only one path forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to grind through it. We have to grind. It is a grinding time right now. We have to grind through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over those two media sessions alone, the beleaguered coach used one word six times. He used it as a verb, as an adjective, and as a noun.<\/p>\n
Grind.<\/p>\n
It might be hockey\u2019s favorite word.<\/p>\n
Grind is commonly used in daily life. According to the Oxford English Dictionary website, it has 31 meanings as a verb, and 11 more as a noun.<\/p>\n
Usually, it\u2019s used to describe a thankless or difficult task. A traffic-filled daily commute can be a grind. Working a 12-hour night shift? That\u2019s a grind. Of course, one can also grind their teeth. Or their coffee beans. Other sports use the word too, often to describe a relentless schedule. MLB\u2019s 162-game season, for example, might be called a grind.<\/p>\n
But hockey is different in its embrace of the term. For starters, the sport has celebrated \u201cgrinders\u201d \u2014 players who are defined by a specific, grinding style on the ice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely one of the most popular words (in the NHL),\u201d said veteran Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly. \u201cIf someone says \u2018You were grinding tonight,\u2019 after a game, that\u2019s a good thing. And yet, if someone comes up to you after a practice and says, \u2018You were grinding out there,\u2019 that could be bad. There\u2019s some nuance to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some even believe hockey has a unique claim to the word.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe people in other sports can say, \u2018It\u2019s a grind,\u2019\u201d said Philadelphia Flyers winger Noah Cates. \u201cBut when you add up the physicality of the game and how relentless the schedule is, hockey truly becomes a grind to play. It\u2019s the only sport (where) you can use the word grind.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the two-month grind toward the Stanley Cup under way for 16 teams, expect to hear the word again and again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe beauty of it,\u201d Rielly said, \u201cis that it means a number of different things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hockey is full of sport-specific slang. You can \u201csauce\u201d a pass to a teammate. The puck can be a \u201cbiscuit,\u201d or lately, it can be a \u201cpill.\u201d When someone describes a teammate as a \u201cbeauty,\u201d we know this is a popular player.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason coaches might not use these words in their day-to-day vernacular. Like all slang, the popularity of usages can come and go between generations.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrind\u201d might be the only hockey word so consistently used by young and old alike.<\/p>\n
The hard-nosed Berube, 60, is as old-school a coach as there is.<\/p>\n
He likes the word so much he had it plastered on the wall of the Leafs video room: \u201cNo grit. No grind. No greatness\u201d \u2014 meant to imply that \u201cgrind\u201d is a key ingredient in greatness.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s shifts out there in a game where you get stuck in your zone and you\u2019re tired, you\u2019ve got to grind it and try to get the puck out somehow. And then throughout the year you have to grind,\u201d Berube said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI use it multiple times a day, every day,\u201d Cates, 27, said.<\/p>\n
The reason the word resonates so much with hockey players might have something to do with its roots in hockey culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Great Philadelphia Fan Book\u201d by former sports reporters Glen Macnow and Anthony Gargano describes how the Flyers of the 1970s became popular.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 hockey denotes work, old-fashioned, hearty labor. After all, players play in shifts, and they dig in the corner and grind along the boards and muck like they do in the mine,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n
The pair described how Bobby Clarke, a Flyers star in the 1970s and later a longtime team executive, loved to have muckers and grinders on his team. The term stuck.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you weren\u2019t very skilled but you were strong, you were a grinder,\u201d Rielly said of growing up playing hockey.<\/p>\n
A grinder, in the eyes of Seattle Kraken forward Bobby McMann, is \u201cwilling to do anything to get a win.\u201d That may be true. But it\u2019s still a vague definition, which McMann appreciates.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrinder\u201d can be seen as pejorative in a league continually favoring speed and skill. Yet \u201cgrind\u201d is still a universally used word in the NHL. Most players remember hearing the word for the first time well before playing pro. But \u201cgrind\u201d was never clearly defined to them. Nor did any ask a coach or teammate what it meant, even as these same players would have learned other hockey-specific terms, such as \u201cforecheck,\u201d when coaches first started having whiteboards at practices.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just\u2026 organically learn the word,\u201d Cates said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Luke Schenn has made a name for himself as a grinder while throwing plenty of hits. (Jeff Curry \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
Since he entered the NHL in 2008, only two NHL players have thrown more hits than Luke Schenn. The bruising Buffalo Sabres defenseman\u2019s eyes light up when asked to define a word that, in a sense, defines him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t even take a breath. You\u2019re not even coming up for air,\u201d Schenn said. \u201cIt\u2019s mind over matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is the meaning of the word positive or negative?<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could use it both ways, which is why it\u2019s used so much,\u201d Schenn said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s positive,\u201d said Leafs defenseman Simon Benoit, himself a grinder. \u201cBut it\u2019s not an easy word. When you\u2019re f\u2014ing grinding, you know it\u2019s going to be tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also good to use off the ice, if something is difficult,\u201d Rielly said. \u201cA travel day when you\u2019re flying and you went out the night before as a team, that\u2019s a grind.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a word that transcends language barriers.<\/p>\n
Benoit, born in Laval, Que., said he\u2019s used the term even when speaking French: \u201cIt\u2019s not a French word, obviously. But we would just say, \u2018grind\u00e9.’\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a different translation for the typical definition of grind in French (moudre). But Benoit does not use that word on the ice.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrind is universal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Same in Swedish, according to Leafs defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson. When communicating in his native language to players around him, the English word \u201cgrind\u201d will pop up in sentences instead of the Swedish translation, \u201cslipa.\u201d<\/p>\n
How a word with multiple meanings stretched \u2014 and then stuck \u2014 throughout the sport is revealing, experts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a subculture adopts a word, it becomes a marker of their group identity,\u201d said Sali Tagliamonte, a professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto. \u201cThe group assigns meaning and it resonates with the values of that group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tagliamonte said she was only familiar with the word\u2019s meaning in a hockey context because of time spent in northern Ontario.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe use of these types of words in subcultures really shows how language can be used as a boundary,\u201d Tagliamonte said. \u201cLike, \u2018Let\u2019s use it because these are the types of people we are.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHumans are wired that way: they love being part of a group of people who have a shared language,\u201d added Sarah Adams, a PhD candidate in linguistics at the University of Colorado and an Avalanche fan. \u201cAnd they love that they don\u2019t have to share it with anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hockey has battled with a culture of exclusivity. It is an expensive sport and its dependence on cold-weather climates means it is not played everywhere. Perhaps the word \u201cgrind\u201d is emblematic of hockey\u2019s regionalism. The sport\u2019s idiosyncrasies, like the sport\u2019s multi-faceted favorite word, can keep it lower down the list of popular sports worldwide.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Grind) is a badge of authenticity to players,\u201d Tagliamonte said. \u201cIt signals insider knowledge of hockey norms, and that enregisterment reinforces the identity of the subculture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Players are fine with that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s because of our mindset,\u201d said Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim. \u201cGrind means something that\u2019s going to be hard. (Hockey players) are more about a hardworking style.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, \u201cgrind\u201d has become popular in hockey thanks to players\u2019 desire to identify with those themes.<\/p>\n
Leafs forward Steven Lorentz said he learned the meaning of \u201cgrind\u201d because he \u201cwas living it.\u201d<\/p>\n
If someone asked him to describe being drafted low in both the OHL and NHL drafts, having to convince coaches with his play to give him a chance and working his way up from the ECHL, the third tier of professional hockey, he would say he \u201cgrinded\u201d through it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a compliment to me,\u201d he said when asked how he would feel if someone called him a grinder. \u201cIt gets thrown around a little loosely, but most guys have gone through a grind in their careers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, players appreciate they have a word of their own to, in their minds, better define what it takes to play hockey.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at four lines on a team, there\u2019s always a working, grinding line,\u201d Tampa Bay Lightning winger Nick Paul said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to push through things and not stop working. In baseball, there\u2019s no players who grind and position-wise, you\u2019re not really grinding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe it is when players feel what it is to \u201cgrind\u201d in the NHL that they can also feel like they belong. The word encompasses almost everything about the league. The physical pain. The work. The travel. And the success you can attain if you come out the other end.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Lorentz believes living by the word grind in the NHL is \u201cthe best thing.\u201d His life as a bottom-line NHL player has never been easy, but he wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to embrace the grind,\u201d he said. \u201cAnything that\u2019s easy is not as fulfilling as grinding to get something done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 Craig Berube stood in front of a group of reporters with plenty on his mind. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,2331,575,85,2370],"class_list":{"0":"post-625481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}