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Professional athletes have access to a ton of resources to ensure they can stay in shape and maximize their longevity. While it’s safe to assume Kirill Kaprizov takes advantage of the trainers and physicians at his disposal, he apparently has another trick up his sleeve: taking baths in blood extracted from deer antlers.
Kaprizov is a Russian native who was raised in a small village in Siberia and made a name for himself in the KHL before the Minnesota Wild selected him in the fifth round of the 2015 NHL Draft.
The only reason he appeared on the Wild’s radar in the first place was a wildfire that pushed back the flight of the scouting team that decided to use the delay to catch a hockey game he was playing in.
That turned out to be a fantastic stroke of luck, as Kaprizov was a nearly unanimous Calder Cup winner in 2021 thanks to his play during his rookie season and has firmly cemented himself as the face of the franchise.
If you’re aware of the existence of Aaron Rodgers, you know he’s one of a number of high-profile athletes who put a fair amount of stake in homeopathic treatments with largely unproven medical benefits. While you can question the efficacy of some of those methods, they’re typically not going to do any harm even if there aren’t any tangible upsides, although some of those methods are particularly..out there.
I think “out there” is a good way to describe the method Kaprizov admitted to harnessing in a recent interview with a Russian news outlet where he acknowledged he tries to take advantage of the alleged healing properties of the blood found in the antlers of deer that roam the region where he was raised.
I’m assuming most people reading this aren’t fluent in Russian, but a Reddit user was kind enough to provide a rough translation that reads: