Time & Perspective Quote by Mark Messier

Messier’s line sounds like boilerplate until you hear the old-school edge underneath it: no one’s coming to save you from your own calendar. By framing performance as “conditioning” and “putting in the time,” he’s quietly rejecting the romantic version of sports where talent shows up and the season takes care of the rest. The real competition, he implies, happens when the lights are off and nobody’s keeping score.

The phrasing is revealingly broad - “overall a lot of it” - as if he’s talking about more than one problem at once: late-season collapses, nagging injuries, inconsistent effort, teams that look great in October and gassed by April. “Condition for 12 months a year” isn’t just fitness advice; it’s a moral standard. Messier came up in an NHL era that prized durability and leadership, and the subtext is that professionalism is measurable in what you do when you’re not being watched.

There’s also a generational nudge here. In modern pro sports, “off-season” can mean brand deals, recovery protocols, and carefully managed training cycles. Messier is steering the conversation back to accountability: you can’t outsource readiness, and you can’t cram it once camp opens. It’s the language of a captain who’s seen how quickly a locker room’s culture slides when conditioning becomes optional - and how quickly the standings expose it.