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Vancouver Canucks' Kevin Lankinen has shared his secret that helps him deal with being a goaltender in the National Hockey League.
Being a professional athlete is never easy. It comes with a lot of stress, expectation and sometimes, drama, if you're not performing up to the standard that fans, media and the team believe you should be at.
Every athlete has a different way to unwind and get their mind off of work and the sport they're involved in and in a recent article with Daniel Wagner of Vancouver is Awesome, Vancouver Canucks goaltender Kevin Lankinen shared what helps him the best.
Vancouver Canucks netminder Kevin Lankinen shares his secret
To help keep his mind active and keep himself at the top of his game, Kevin Lankinen told Daniel Wagner that he enjoys to read, which is his favourite hobby away from hockey.
'I always had that curious mind to learn things outside of hockey too,' said Lankinen. 'I just always think that the better you are as a person, the better an athlete you are. The broader the view you have, I think that helps with perspective in hockey too. And reading has been a way for me to just detach a little bit and put my mind somewhere else.'He added, 'I think reading has been a really good help for me in that case, where I can activate some other parts of my brain and learn something new, and then when I get to the hockey rink, I feel refreshed for the love of the game.'
Lankinen shared that he's currently reading Siddhartha, a famous novel written in 1922 by German-Swiss writer Hermann Hesse which is about a man trying to seek enlightenment. He also mentioned that the next book he plans on reading is The Hidden Life of Trees, written by Peter Wohlleben.
So far, Lankinen's love of reading has been able to help his on-ice performance as has been lights out since joining the Vancouver Canucks. In six games with the Canucks, the Helsinki native has a record of 4-0-2 with a 2.29 goals against average, a .920 save percentage and one shutout.
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