Inside the nomadic world of NHL players on PTOs: ‘You have to believe in yourself’

The winding Trans-Canada Highway took on one of its most stunning stretches through British Columbia and Tyson Barrie’s head kept moving.

The 13-year NHL veteran would glance out the window of his SUV at sprawling mountains, then look to his right at his six-year-old Aussiedoodle named Ralph, sitting in the passenger seat. Midway through a 14-hour drive, the world of chartered flights felt far away.

At one end of the drive, his home on Vancouver Island including his wife Emma, his three-year-old son and his new daughter, not even a month old.

On the other, uncertainty: His final destination was an AirBnb in Calgary.

Barrie was once considered one of the NHL’s pre-eminent offensive defencemen. Between 2013 and 2019, his 73 goals were the 10th-highest among blueliners. His last contract, signed with the Edmonton Oilers, was worth $13.5 million over three years. Yet when that contract ended, Barrie was 32 and had been traded to the Nashville Predators. He was a free agent waiting for contract offers from other NHL teams.

The only call he got around free agency was an offer from the Calgary Flames. Not with the security of one last lengthy deal, but with three letters Barrie was not accustomed to: PTO.

A “Professional Tryout” is just that: An offer from a team to come to training camp and try out for a roster spot without a guaranteed contract and prove you’re capable of playing in the NHL.

Barrie and Emma shook their heads back in early summer. They decided to wait throughout the long, hot months for a better offer to emerge.

“It never did,” Barrie said. “You wrap your head around that, and you have to regroup.”

And so as morning turned into late night, Barrie spent his drive recalibrating a future that remained up in the air.

Barrie is one of many players recently considered core pieces of NHL teams that have since been forced to fight for a roster spot in an unconventional way.

It is easy to become swept up by the evolution of the game at the NHL level. Younger players improving sooner has seen the league skewing younger. A quicker and more entertaining pace of play has come as a result. But at the other end are veterans fighting for their professional lives.

“It’s all part of the journey. I’m grateful for what I’ve been given by the game. If you want to continue, sometimes you have to do unconventional things,” Barrie said.

As training camp continues this week, NHL regulars like Barrie, Travis Dermott, Max Pacioretty and Sam Gagner on PTOs will start to learn their fate.

“I’m not doing this for the money,” Gagner, on a PTO with the Carolina Hurricanes, said. “I’m doing this because I believe I can be a valuable contributor at the NHL level, and I still love to play.”

Being on a PTO sees players take on a nomadic hockey life. They usually live thousands of kilometers away from family. They receive the standard NHL per day per diem when they’re on the road with their team, which is $132. At a time when NHL players are more focused than ever on their diets and depend on their bodies for their success, being on a PTO often means living strictly off food delivery services. Fun for a day or two, not ideal once it starts to feel like an eternal road trip.

“Being in a hotel is tough. You’ve got to make sure you eat the right things, but you open the Doordash app and McDonald’s is the first thing thrown in your face,” Zach Aston-Reese, who was on a PTO with the Maple Leafs in 2022 and the Hurricanes in 2023, said. “It takes a certain type of maturity to handle it.”

Few have seen the evolution of the NHL and players having to mature quicker than Gagner, 35. The league is changing, and Gagner’s role has changed with it. A generation ago, veterans like Gagner and his 1,043 games of NHL experience would have been in demand.

But now, the economics of the league have shifted. NHL teams are forced to take a bet on players on entry-level contracts instead of experience. Teams can shave a few thousand dollars here and there and get players who are better prepared for the pro game than young players a generation ago would have been.

“It’s the evolution of the salary cap,” Gagner said when asked about why PTOs are becoming more common. “It’s been flat, essentially, for a while and teams have gotten comfortable giving young guys on entry-level deals opportunities to see where they’re at. And young players are ready now.”

But the changing face of the league has forced veteran players to make difficult choices to keep their careers alive. Gagner, for example, told his agent, Judd Moldaver, that even if European-based teams came calling with lucrative offers, it wasn’t worth even letting him know.

Gagner has three children aged nine, seven and five back in Oakville, Ont. While their friends are beginning another year with their peers at school, they’re being home-schooled by his wife, Rachel. Quickly rooting them from one school and throwing them into another wasn’t worth it.

This is not new terrain for Gagner. After double hip surgery in 2023, Gagner missed training camp. He wanted to keep playing, but no NHL teams were calling.

He took an unconventional step to swallow his pride: Gagner himself called his former agent and current CEO of hockey operations with the Edmonton Oilers, Jeff Jackson, to pitch himself. He believed he could help the Oilers once he got up to game speed. Being familiar with the training staff as he recovered from surgery would help, with the Oilers having drafted Gagner back in 2007.

Eventually, he turned that PTO into a one-year deal.

“You have to believe in yourself going into these situations,” Gagner said. “It has to come across when you’re having these conversations.”

As Gagner outlines this belief, his situation still hasn’t improved much. He is sitting alone in an empty hotel room in Raleigh, N.C.

“There’s not many guys on the team that I know,” Gagner said. “It’s a unique experience.”

A preseason spent essentially on his own when his children miss him dearly sums up much of the PTO experience. Gagner’s self-belief can be strong, but that still doesn’t dampen the stress of being separated from his family and not knowing where and when his children will begin school.

“We’re just…waiting to see what’s next,” Gagner said. “I’m fortunate to have their support. They all want to see Dad play hockey.”

Players who accept PTOs are not just grey-haired veterans.

Travis Dermott is 27, the age when many players finally sink their teeth into a long-term contract as an unrestricted free agent. But the only offer he got came very late in the summer: A PTO with the Oilers.

Even though he’s young, Dermott’s life on a PTO is no different than, say, Barrie and Gagner. A 2015 second-round pick and at one time a regular NHL defenceman, Dermott has been squeezed out by a salary cap that has barely increased as of late.

In Edmonton, his existence has become more of a solitary one. Dermott has two young children but will hardly see them through training camp on the other side of the continent.

When Dermott, Barrie, Gagner and others find out their fate remains anyone’s guess.

“I have no idea,” Barrie said when asked if he’s aware how or when he’ll be told if he will be a Calgary Flame this season.

The strain of wondering “Is today the day I get cut or offered a contract?” can be overwhelming.

“This is definitely more stressful than ever because it’s not just about me and my hockey career. I’m providing for my family now,” Dermott said.

But the proverbial carrot on the stick put at various distances from players? That’s what keeps them coming back.

When Logan Shaw signed a PTO with the Flames in 2018, he was without the comforts he’d enjoy had he signed a contract and known where he’d be for the season. Living in a downtown hotel without a car – as many players do – Shaw would make the 20-minute walk to the Saddledome every day to suit up and keep trying to crack the NHL.

There were days in the autumn when the temperature dipped and he wasn’t prepared. Shaw had packed just one bag of clothes – his summer bag, he called it – while he left a second bag of winter clothes at his parent’s house in Cape Breton, N.S.

“It’s stressful,” Shaw said. “If you’re a single guy and you’re trying to make it, it’s less stressful, but you’re still asking yourself, ‘Where am I actually going to be?’ You don’t know what to pack. You can’t bring a car. You can’t get a place to stay.”

The Flames took off for Beijing for preseason games while Shaw remained in Calgary skating with a few other players who didn’t make the trip. Shaw quietly wondered if he was making a mistake. But he reminded himself that a PTO is not just an audition for the Flames but for the rest of the league.

He played well enough during his preseason games. While the Flames cut him, Shaw’s audition caught the eye of the Winnipeg Jets and he signed two one-year NHL deals with the organization.

For all the sacrifices players make and the lack of comfort that comes throughout training camp, PTOs can sometimes be worth it in the long run.

Just ask Noah Gregor. He scored 10 goals in 57 games in 2022-23, but the only offers he had were PTOs.

“It’s something I wasn’t expecting to have to do so early in my career,” Gregor said of signing a PTO with the Leafs at 25. “It was disappointing.”

Yet Gregor turned that PTO with the Maple Leafs in 2023-24 into a one-year $775,000 contract that season and then another one-year deal this season, with a bump up to $850,000 with the Ottawa Senators.

Gregor thinks back to how uncomfortable he was. He understands he could have walked away from his NHL dream when the guaranteed contract offers weren’t coming.

But Gregor now has a spot firmly in the Senators’ top 12. When he takes to the ice, getting the kind of increased ice time that will likely come with his new role, Gregor will be happy he bet on himself.

“There’s a lot of different stories and a lot of different ways you can end up in the NHL,” Gregor said. “A lot of players make a good career after coming off of a PTO. You’ve got to keep that in mind and keep that belief in yourself.”

(Top photos of Tyson Barrie and Travis Dermott: Brett Holmes / Icon Sportswire and Perry Nelson / Imagn Images)