How naturally lean NHL prospects bulk up to physically compete with the pros

New York Times

8 hours ago

As of July, Will Moore weighed 182 pounds. It took him work to get there. During a four-week training program for June's NHL Draft Combine, the 18-year-old gained 10 pounds.
Moore, a second-round pick of the Boston Bruins, was fighting genetics.
'My family's all very lean,' the wiry Moore said of parents Vanusa and Patrick. 'Very fit, very healthy.'
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The 6-foot-3 Moore is just getting started. To become a No. 2 NHL center, one of Moore's mandates is to become big enough to battle with juggernauts such as Tage Thompson (6-foot-6, 220 pounds), Auston Matthews (6-3, 217 pounds) and Aleksander Barkov (6-3, 214 pounds), men who are as large as they are skilled. As challenging as the ask may be, Lane Hutson, Jared Spurgeon, Clayton Keller and Elias Pettersson are proof that naturally skinny players can join the league's elite.
Moore, who will be a Boston College freshman, is on this journey as an ectomorph: tall, lean, designed to burn calories. Prospects like Moore, known in the fitness category as hard gainers, must be stricter than their peers about following a three-pillar plan of training, eating and sleeping, all while improving as hockey players.
'To be an elite athlete, it's a job. Just like any other job,' said National Team Development Program head strength coach Joe Meloni, who trained Moore during his two-year NTDP residency. 'You have to put in the hours. For some people, those hours are in the weight room. Some people, those hours they need to develop their skills on the ice. For some people, it's in the kitchen.'
For these players, patience is nonnegotiable.
'There's no quick solution,' Meloni said, 'to get super big as quickly as possible.'
For his combine prep, Moore trained specifically for the 10 tests, such as the bench press and 5-10-5 shuttle run, required of every participant. He did so with two parameters in mind: improving technique and results for each test while burning the minimum amount of calories.
Since then, Moore's goals have shifted. He is pursuing body-wide hypertrophy to increase the size of his muscles.
In the gym, that means volume.
A larger player chasing strength gains, for example, might squat four sets of five repetitions with heavy weights. In comparison, a leaner player would decrease the weight, but he might perform four sets of 12 reps.
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He could also incorporate eccentric tempo. On a squat, this would mean descending slowly to increase the muscles' time under tension. To work the upper body, a hypertrophic-centered exercise could be pull-ups using a band.
'He's doing more volume, meaning more reps and sets, with more time under tension. Which means slower reps,' Meloni said. 'Slower time under tension. Time under tension is what creates change in the muscle in terms of hypertrophy.'
These are challenging workouts, designed to test muscles. The player who wants changes in body composition, in all likelihood, will be spending more time in the gym than peers seeking improvement in speed, strength or power.
'When you're training, what you're doing, in a way, is damaging muscle to some extent,' said Meloni. 'The more time you spend under tension, the more damage occurs on the muscle, the more it needs to rebuild itself, the more it grows.'
At the NTDP, an important window is a six-week segment during the Under-17 season once games conclude. The goal during this phase is to build muscle for all players, not just the lean ones.
The players are not just hammering the weights at this time. They are eating whenever they can.
For part of the summer, Moore lived with teammate Andrew O'Neill. Mother Jamie O'Neill was in charge of the cooking. Moore approved of her work.
'I don't leave the table,' said Moore. 'You've got to make sure you're always eating. If you're ever hungry, then that's a problem. You've got to be full basically at all times of the day. Even when you're full, you've still got to eat. It's a lot. It's tough. But I love the results.'
Moore finds breakfast to be tricky. If he works out in the morning, sometimes he loses whatever he ate earlier. He could handle Jamie O'Neill's breakfast sandwich: three eggs and five bacon slices. That, plus a protein shake, would serve him well for his morning workout.
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After the gym, Moore usually hits Chipotle for steak, rice and beans. In the afternoon, he'd have a protein shake and snacks. For dinner, he liked steak, chicken, mashed potatoes and vegetables. He didn't stop there.
'Not afraid to throw some dessert in there. Because all calories are good for me,' Moore said. 'Usually, a big bowl of ice cream. That's a good one.'
Sometimes he'd finish the day with a final evening shake.
Like Moore, Vashek Blanar is naturally skinny. The 6-foot-4 Blanar, a fourth-round pick of the Boston Bruins in 2025, weighed 185 pounds in July. The 18-year-old defenseman's goal is to gain 10 pounds in 2025-26 when he plays in Sweden. It's unlikely the reed-like Blanar will ever resemble the likes of Victor Hedman (245 pounds).
'It's been hard,' Blanar said of gaining weight. 'I've been at it for about a year.'
Blanar usually eats seven meals a day. He'll start with eggs, bacon, yogurt and fruit. He snacks before and after his morning workouts.
For lunch, he rotates between salmon and chicken. He has more snacks in the afternoon before his first dinner.
IF Troja-Ljungby, Blanar's 2024-25 team in Sweden, provided each player with boxed meals. He would take two: one to eat then and another for his second dinner between 9 and 10 p.m. He would usually have chicken, spaghetti, rice and vegetables.
'Until I get full, until I can't eat anymore,' Blanar said of his intake routine. 'You just can't be hungry when you're trying to gain weight. You have to be full all the time.'
Jonathan Morello knows the feeling. One year ago, the 6-foot-1 Morello weighed 182 pounds. The Bruins' 2024 fifth-round pick returned to his second development camp 10 pounds heavier. It requires diligence at every meal and in between.
For breakfast, he might have four eggs, two bagels, fruit and orange juice. For lunch, usually after a workout, Morello often eats a chicken or steak sandwich with salad. After an afternoon protein shake, the 19-year-old likes chicken breasts for dinner, sweet potatoes, asparagus and broccoli. Protein bars and shakes are common for between-meals snacks.
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'There's times where I'm eating something and I'm like, 'I don't want this at all,'' the 19-year-old said. 'But I need to force myself a bit.'
All this training and eating does not leave much downtime. But none of this works without sleep.
'I know lots of people that can run on low amounts of sleep and be fine,' Morello said. 'For me, that's just not the case.'
Some nights, Morello can go down for 11 hours. On others, eight will serve him well. On average, he goes to bed around 9:30 p.m. He wakes up around 8:30 a.m. prior to breakfast and a gym session. He does not consider himself a morning person.
Conversely, Elliott Groenewold has no trouble getting going at 7:30 a.m. The 19-year-old defenseman, who will be a sophomore at Quinnipiac this season, made sure to finish his homework and hit the sheets around 9:30 p.m.
'The best thing you can do to recover is sleep,' said Groenewold. 'Eight hours of sleep is good. But for athletes like us, we need more. If we want to recover to the best of our abilities, we need nine, nine-and-a-half hours of sleep. It takes discipline to go to sleep early, especially being in college.'
During waking hours, a player can go all out on the ice, in the gym and at the table. But none of it works without recovery. Under the sheets, players repair the muscles damaged during training, release growth hormone for restoration and refresh the brain from the stress of on-ice performance. So if sleep is compromised by procrastination, screen time or any other kind of diversion, it can reduce any gains from earlier in the day.
Like with others, there is no ideal amount of sleep for skinny players. Some need eight. Others require 10. Whatever the amount, it has to be quality sleep.
'We might train, we might practice, for two, three hours a day,' said Quinnipiac strength and conditioning coach Brijesh Patel. 'Sometimes, with your habits you have off the ice and away from the gym, you can undo exactly what you did within those two or three hours of what you did in the gym. When I train and practice, I'm not actually getting better.
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'What you're doing is you're creating systemic fatigue. You're creating a stimulus to improve. But the only time your brain actually learns what you did and your body can actually recover from the demands you put on it is during the recovery process.'
(Photo of William Moore: Michael Miller / ISI Photos / Getty Images)
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