“It can be a lot of stress, to be honest,” Tomas Tatar said through a smirk, but speaking with sincerity.
No, this was not about his day job, which comes with enough stressors as it is.
This is something entirely different.
When you’re a professional athlete, your life is an amalgamation of pressure-filled moments throughout the season. You’re counted on every day to manage the stressors and overcome them.
That’s how you become the best.
But some stresses are too overwhelming, even for a veteran with over 900 games. Sometimes, you have to accept defeat and move on. At times, the things that once brought you joy become too heavy a burden to bear.
Sometimes, you can no longer bear the responsibility of being the team DJ.
That’s where 34-year-old Tatar now sits in his career. It was time to pass the torch.
“I kind of feel like it's more a burden than a pleasure, to be honest,” Tatar said. “Because, like, you feel nervous all the time, and you have to make sure everyone likes it.”
There are several different kinds of DJs in an NHL locker room. There’s the morning shift on a practice day, when players pop in and out of the room; there’s the pregame, pump-up DJ; and the hit-the-track win song DJ.
Whoever you are on the spectrum of locker room DJ, it’s a responsibility.
“My music probably cannot be played in the morning, to be honest,” Tatar shared, who has an affinity for EDM-style music. “Yeah, it's more bumpy, it's that kind of style.”
For a while, Tatar handled the music. But he eventually needed to release himself of the burden.
“The older I am, I feel like I'm fading away more like,” he laughed. Questioned if it was he himself fading away or his musical tastes as an elder statesman in the Devils locker room, Tatar was quick to interject it wasn’t his taste in music, but a matter of not having the time built into his pre-game routine anymore.
“I honestly have less time for it,” he said. “I used to search the songs, work with it a bit, and I just don’t have time anymore. So, I passed the torch to a few guys here.”
The torch landed directly at Timo Meier’s feet.
And he loves it.
“I’m the hype-up music before the game,” Meier revealed. “Tuna said it's a lot of pressure, and it's tough when it's 82 games because you're trying to switch it up a little bit. We’ve got a few songs that we've been rolling that have been working. So that's also, like, something you got to experiment with. It’s a tough job, a very hard, underrated job in the locker room.”
Nico Hischier, who carries a heavy responsibility already with his captaincy, has the more relaxed, less stressful DJing to go along with his regular day job.
“He’s the morning skate guy, the more chill music. He’s the morning DJ where you don’t have to wake up," Meier said of his friend, before jokingly divulging that his own job as the pregame DJ carries much more of a burden. "It’s a lot more pressure for the pump up, every one is in the locker room, everybody is listening, the volume is way louder. In the morning, it’s just background music, he could literally put on a hotel lobby playlist and no one would really notice.”
That's also completely fine by Hischier.
"I mean, I want to see it as too much of the pressure, I only play it in the morning," he said. "I play a little bit of everything in the morning. I have some German songs, English, just something chill. I think in the morning that you just gotta watch out. It can't be too much pushy. What what they're trying to play pregame, I try to avoid in the morning."
Music plays such an essential role in a locker room; it gets you ready for your day, it can break the tension, and it sets the tone.
"I think it's important that you have good music that can't get you feeling good before you go out there," Meier said.
What's evident is whether you're the morning skate DJ or the pregame DJ, it's a role and responsibility taken seriously. You're setting the tone for the room. There are many people in a locker room, many different tastes and cultures; you can't just go in and completely dominate. You're a team. The music has to be the same, and it takes time.
"You get a feeling for what guys like," Meier shared. "Or sometimes when you play something, you can read the room too, if guys are vibing with it or not. It's a little bit of an experiment.
"I just kind of try to please everybody a little bit," he added. "So like find some mixes that are songs that everybody likes. Obviously me and Tuna like to go techno. We'd like to go a little harder than we probably can. For most guys, they like it, like our stuff. But if it was totally up to us, it'd be probably, some guys saying, 'What is this?' Yeah, so try to, like, kind of find a find that fine line."
For Meier, he's thriving as the pregame DJ in the locker room and loves it.
There's just one thing, he thinks, that could make it even better:
“We might need a little DJ setup in the corner to make it more fun."
