John Tavares has spent enough years in the NHL to know what keeps a player sharp, and he’s quick to point to Andy O’Brien as someone who helped shape that understanding early in his career.
That perspective matters now because O’Brien is joining the Toronto Maple Leafs as vice president of sports performance, giving the team another experienced voice in a room already filled with veteran names. Toronto is heading into the 2026-27 season as the fifth-oldest team in the NHL, with an average age of 29.92 according to Elite Prospects. The roster includes Sergei Bobrovsky, Colton Sissons, Morgan Rielly, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Chris Tanev, and Tavares remains right in the middle of that group as one of the club’s key leaders.
At 35, with his 36th birthday coming on Sep. 20, Tavares is still producing like a top-line threat.
Last season, he led the Maple Leafs with 31 goals and finished with 71 points while appearing in all 82 games. For a player in his 18th NHL season, that kind of output doesn’t happen by accident.
A big part of Tavares’ longevity has been the way he approaches his body and his game. He said a past run of training with O’Brien made a lasting impression, especially the standard set by Sidney Crosby and the work around O’Brien’s Vail camp.
"What really benefited me was being around Sid after my rookie season, going out to Andy O'Brien's Vail camp and getting around what his regimen was like," Tavares said. "The intensity, the level of competitiveness, the will, the desire to play the game and to get better at it, not just in putting his skates on, but how he trains, how he takes care of himself, and it was really eye-opening and realized I had a long way to go and the type of player I want to be and the level you want to play at and hope you're hoping to accomplish."
Tavares said that lesson still applies as he enters another season, and he believes his offseason went well.
"I had a really good offseason," he told reporters, including TheHockeyNews.com 's Michael Traikos. "Just want to keep doing what I'm doing. I think continue to push the envelope to find ways to improve, but understand what my strengths are and continue to evolve my game, and still be highly productive and expect a lot of myself."
He’s not looking to overhaul anything at this stage of his career. Instead, Tavares said the goal is to keep the parts of his game that already work at a high level while tightening up the areas that still need attention.
"There's always little things you try to focus on, but I think the biggest thing is just trying to make sure your strengths are your strengths," he said. "I understand the parts of my game that need to get work on and be stronger. You always want to touch on that stuff, but I don't think you want to always look too much to reinvent the wheel, but to continue to fine-tune the things that you're good at.
"Understand how that fits into who you are as a player and your role within the team, and how you continue to push yourself to improve and get better and impact the game at a high level. So I love it as much as ever, driven as much as ever. I continue to try to do the things I need to do to be the type of player that I've been and find ways to continue to evolve the way that I've been playing throughout my career," Tavares added.
He also said the broader approach to staying in shape and staying effective has changed since he entered the league, and he likes where the bar has moved.
"Things have definitely evolved," he said. "I think the sports science just continues to get better and better.
The way I think guys work on their game and the way they get really in tune with what they're doing and how they're doing it, it continues to get better and better. So whether that's on ice, whether that's off ice, whether it's recovery, how you eat, how you feel yourself, all those things.
I think, naturally, the bar is getting raised."
For Tavares, that’s where O’Brien’s influence comes back into the picture. The intensity and detail he remembers from those early training experiences are the same traits Toronto is hoping can help its veteran core stay at its level. For a team leaning on a lot of seasoned players, that’s a useful addition to the mix.
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