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Ex-NHL Star Chris Pronger Shares The Best And Worst Parts About Traveling As A Pro Athlete

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Ex-NHL Star Chris Pronger Shares The Best And Worst Parts About Traveling As A Pro Athlete

Getty Image / Bruce Bennett


  • Ex-NHL star Chris Pronger spent 23 seasons in the NHL and played a whopping 1,167 games which means he played somewhere around 583 games that required travel
  • He recently shared the best and worst parts of traveling as a pro athlete and how his experience changed throughout the years
  • Read more NHL stories here

Former NHL star Chris Pronger spent 23 LONG seasons in the NHL and played in 1,167 games. That’s A LOT of travel. There are 82 games in an NHL season with 41 home games and 41 on the road, without counting the playoffs.

Let’s just assume that Pronger played roughly half of his games on the road and that’s 583 games that required him to travel to another arena. This meant getting on a commercial plane, chartered flight, bus, or train for games and in this Twitter thread below, Chris Pronger details what that travel was really like.

We’ve covered some recent Twitter threads from Chris Pronger including his first one about common ‘traps’ pro athletes fall into and lose their money. We also covered a recent thread about how easy it is for professional athletes to blow through $30 million. This thread is a little different as he’s discussing things that are mostly out of athlete’s control, travel. The best and worst parts of getting to road games and how it changed over the years.

Chris Pronger Shares The Best And Worst Parts About Traveling

Pronger played two seasons in Hartford so he’s really referring to his earliest campaigns here:

I’m trying to imagine the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls walking through an airport like this…

Why The East Coast Will Always Be Better Than The West (For Travel)

In hindsight, maybe putting an NHL team in Seattle was a bad idea.

Chris Pronger’s favorite planes and airports

I saw a guy spend about 4 hours of a 12 hour flight bending his seat’s headrest into a concave shape to almost act as a pillow. He 100% ruined the plane but it reminds me of this:

Chris Pronger Shares The Hardest Part About Travel

Man’s gotta eat!

An interesting takeaway I have from this is there aren’t hard time limits on how athletes spend their time. They’re required to travel for road games even if that means they aren’t getting proper rest. Elsewhere on the plane, you’ve got pilots and flight attendants who have very strict limits on the number of consecutive hours they can work without taking breaks.

Athletes can eat, sleep, and relax on the plane, sure. But you’ve got a 6’6″ guy like Chris Pronger being forced into a middle seat and that’s not exactly rest.