When I arrive at the Toronto Maple Leafs practice facility in Toronto, the rink is empty. When I'd visited in the past, a sea of players in blue would be swarming the ice and I'd stand by the dressing room with some other reporters waiting to get my allocated minutes. But today, there's no frenzy of skaters; the dressing room, which is typically a vortex of sweaty men and flannel-shirted sportswriters vying for players' attention, is now practically empty, save for head coach Craig Berube holding court at the back for media, his face obscured by cameras and bright lights.
That's because I'm not here to talk hockey, but to discuss music with the goalie Joseph Woll and centre Steve Lorentz — the latter of whom emerges from one of the many doors and gives me a firm handshake.
Lorentz reminds me of the hockey boys I grew up with, chipper and chatty, as he tells me about playing guitar: "I wouldn't say I'm a huge musical talent, but it's just something I picked up. I came home from the season one year, and I was just bored."
Teaching himself how to play from YouTube, he has since performed with friend and country musician Cole Bradley in Nashville. "I'm very fascinated by it," he says. "I like the music theory and stuff, but I just don't really have the talent to get me to the next level." This comment makes me laugh, and I point out that he already has a talent: playing hockey. "That's exactly it. It's more like my second hobby, right?"
I ask whether he's trying to learn anything new now. "No, no, I'm not learning anything right now. I'm mastering my craft," Lorentz half jokes, saying that he primarily plays acoustic guitar. He picked up a cheap Stratocaster to try to learn how to play electric, but has had some difficulty adjusting. "There's a whole lot of fingerpicking and I can't do it," he says, cheerfully resigned.
Outside of playing guitar a few times a week, Lorentz has a varied soundtrack to his life. "I'm listening to music all the time," he notes. "To and from the rinks, obviously. In the locker room, the young guys have these EDM banger playlists now that they like, and it's just not for me. I like the classics: '80s, rock 'n' roll. That's kind of my thing." He lists a few other genres; Lorentz is omnivorous, yet allergic to EDM.
With the help of his fiancée (she provided some starter playlists to help fill out his library), Lorentz recently made the switch from Apple Music to Spotify. When I ask who his top artists were, he answers without missing a beat: "50 Cent and Eminem."
Lorentz continues, "You know who I think is good? Lil Dicky. He's not popular, but he's got good flow. He's good but he makes joke songs. He just spits off. He's so fast, and [raps] this stupid stuff, but to me it's a talent to be able to freestyle off the top of your head and just make things work and rhyme and flow."
Lorentz and I are still chopping it up when Woll ambles over to us, chugging the last of his unidentifiable beige protein drink while Lorentz starts gassing him up: "That interview is gonna be very different because he's actually a musical nut and he knows what he's doing."
"Care to comment?" I ask Woll.
"I think Steve's pretty good too," he says.
"You've never heard me play!" Lorentz exclaims.
"He's yet to send me his guitar though. I'm sitting here waiting for a video," Woll says.
I glean that they've never played together before. But if they did, Lorentz has it all figured out: "I'd be the rhythm and Joe would steal the spotlight. I would just hold a steady beat, you know? That steady, steady tune and I'll let Joe take the show away. Kind of like a… Who plays piano? Like an Elton John kind of thing." Woll sits there grinning and takes it.
Before my interview with Woll even officially begins, he's already asked me three questions about myself. When I hand him and Lorentz my phone while we're staging the header photo for this article, he asks about the painting on my home screen (it's a photo I took of a panel from Francis Bacon's Triptych–August 1972 at the Tate Britain), whether I'm "going through something" because I was last listening to "Cry for Me" by Magdalena Bay, and, once Lorentz leaves, if I'm a musician. Woll is affable, curious and cerebral — a little more reserved than his teammate, but eager to nerd out about a topic he clearly loves.
His family bought a piano over a decade ago, and Woll picked it up on a bit of a whim. "I've never been very formal about it and kind of messing around," he says, although "messing around" for him means being able to play melodies by ear. "It'll take me a bit, but I can do it that way. If I want to do it quicker, then I just search how to play it and memorize how to play basically."
He continues, "It would be much easier if I could read music, because then I could just Google the sheet music and learn, but I'm clueless." Woll took both guitar and piano lessons for a short period of time, but he fell out of both quickly because he didn't get to play the songs he wanted to play. "I didn't actually learn how to play guitar. I just memorized what to do."
I ask about his playing habits, and Woll reveals he hasn't played much lately; he's been busy producing. "I go in and out of phases with playing more and playing less," he says. "There's two avenues of music. Right now, I've been making a lot more music, so I play piano for tracks I would make, but I haven't played for fun as much lately."
For those wondering, he's a staunch Logic guy. Kygo, Kaskade and Illenium are staples from which he draws inspiration. "And maybe Hans Zimmer. If I could magically incorporate these people in one song it would be awesome," he enthuses. This last mention isn't surprising; Woll's love for film scores is well-known since he first went viral after posting a video of him playing the Interstellar theme ("Anything Christopher Nolan is gold.") on Instagram in early 2024.
Along with his fondness for Hans Zimmer — "They made that new Gladiator but they didn't use Hans Zimmer," Woll says with genuine disappointment — Woll cites pianist Ludovico Einaudi and composer Ludwig Göransson, who wrote the score for Oppenheimer, as other favourites. Woll is particularly fascinated in Göransson. "Have you seen some of his deconstructing videos?" He asks. One in particular stands out, in which Göransson talks about how he made "Can You Hear the Music?" — the song that scores the pivotal scene where Oppenheimer's intellectual genius is established. It's a montage of his time at university, where he's "mastering his craft," to borrow words from my earlier conversation with Lorentz.
For Woll, it's the ease with which Göransson is able to compose so flawlessly that he can't get over: "I'm like, 'What do you mean you just play that melody?' You gotta watch this video."
Later, back at home, I do watch the video. "The feeling of mastering something on your instrument is so rewarding," Göransson says in the video as he describes the logos behind the film's primary theme.
What strikes me most from my conversations with both Lorentz and Woll is how they talk about talent — their own, as well as that of others. They approach their own perceived limitations with a sincere humility that's jarring coming from such accomplished hockey players.
Few can excel at even one skill. To be one of the best in the world at what you do — as is the case with professional athletes, who have beaten all but a couple hundred others to play at their level — and to still want to know more and get better at something else is astonishing. For the love of the game, if you will. It's a wonder to be graced with that hunger to keep searching, searching.