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Stay-At-Home Shark - Jan. 1, 2012 – Adam Proteau

On the ice, Logan Couture is a key component of the San Jose Sharks and one of the most dynamic young stars in the league. But in the brief amount of vacation time any modern-day NHLer gets each summer, before he has to return to a gruelling workout schedule, Couture isn’t someone who needs to run with bulls or climb Kilimanjaro. Other players can wakeboard and travel the globe, but as far as the 23-year-old center is concerned, he’d rather be in the vicinity of his hometown of London, Ont. “I’m not really a big vacation guy,” said Couture, who played his third NHL season in 2011-12 and finished with career highs in assists (34) and points (65). “As players we travel so much during the year and spend so much time in different cities that I just like being back at home in London and spending time with my family. The backyard of my house is the perfect spot in the summer – sitting in the sun, jumping in the pool. I like things pretty low-key.”

That said, Couture has a number of off-season interests and passions that keep him busy in the few weeks of down time he gets before he heads back to the gym in late May and begins his training regimen. For instance, after he and the Sharks were eliminated by St. Louis in the first round of the 2012 playoffs in late April, Couture laid low in California for a few weeks. In that time (as well as a few weeks prior), he watched as much as he could of baseball, the sport that rivalled hockey as his chief childhood love before he chose puck pursuit over diamond dirt in his early teens.

Baseball was and still is a significant part of Couture’s life. As a boy, he was a two-time Honda Canada/Toronto Blue Jays “hit-run-throw” contest national champion – and as he got older, he evolved into a shortstop with a solid glove who usually hit second or third for his London-area teams. And now, as a major league hockey player, he has the Major League Baseball all-access game package on his laptop computer and never misses a game involving his beloved Blue Jays, whom he refers to as “us” numerous times over the course of an early May telephone interview.

But his fandom goes beyond that. If you follow Couture’s Twitter feed (@Logancouture) – as more than 100,000 people now do – you’ll know he has become friends with Blue Jays players (including pitching ace Ricky Romero) and gets out to see their games in person whenever possible. Couture took advantage of a golden opportunity in that regard during a Blue Jays road trip in early May, watching Toronto beat the Oakland A’s and heading down to the clubhouse after the game to chat with his friends on the team before they continued on to play the Minnesota Twins. “They’re young and skilled,” Couture said of the up-and-coming Jays, who started 2012 strongly before their relief pitchers blew a few saves prior to pulling into Oakland. “Unfortunately, the closer situation hasn’t been good and cost us a bunch of games, but I like the way our pitchers have pitched and our young guys like (third baseman) Brett Lawrie have played really well. It’s just good to see.”

NHLERS SPEND SO MUCH TIME TRAVELLING THAT I JUST LIKE BEING BACK HOME– LOGAN COUTURE

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A more recent pastime of Couture’s is one familiar to many NHLers in the off-season: golf. Thanks to the punishing travel schedule all Western Conference players have to endure, he has little time to get out on the links during the hockey season. But he more than makes up for it come summer, swinging the clubs four to five days a week at his home course in London and trying to improve his game (he normally shoots in the 80s and his best round was a 75). He hasn’t yet played the legendary Pebble Beach course, as have a couple Sharks teammates, but he’s intending to over the coming years.

Once the dog days of summer set in for us normal folk, Couture can be found doing one of four things: golfing, watching baseball, hitting the gym in preparation for a new NHL season and spending time in his backyard, which is shrouded in seclusion outside of London and backs onto a tranquil ravine. The importance of quiet home time can’t be stressed enough for public figures such as Couture, who loves nothing more when he’s at his house than to work on his tan, jump in his pool and tinker around with music, books and one of his more recent pickups, his iPhone.

Let’s deal with those categories one at a time. When it comes to music, Couture is into hip-hop and Canadian artists Drake and The Weeknd. He was one of the first players who raced onto the ice to see Drake play an intermission set at the 2012 all-star game in Ottawa and in early May he caught a concert by The Weeknd at the historic Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco.

Couture counts himself as an avid reader and was recently introduced by Sharks teammate T.J. Galiardi to the bestselling Mitch Rapp spy novel series by author Vince Flynn and couldn’t get enough, comparing it to Kiefer Sutherland’s wildly popular 24TV show and burrowing through three of Flynn’s 13 books in two weeks.

As a member of the online-and-computer-savvy generation, Couture also is usually plugged in somewhere. For the longest time, the proud Canadian subscribed to the Canada-based BlackBerry, but he decided to make a switch recently and bought his first iPhone and iPad. The former Ottawa 67’s player has not regretted his choice, to say the least. “Since I got my iPhone I’ve been addicted to it and I can’t put the thing down,” Couture said before listing some of the iPhone game applications he enjoys. “I just started getting into games like Draw Something and Words With Friends. They’re fun. When I’m on the road trips, there’s a couple word scramble games like Words With Friends that I play, Risk, or stuff like that where I can play on my own on the plane or the bus.”

Couture will be entering the first season of a two-year contract extension in 2012-13 that more than doubles his ’11-12 rookie-structured salary of $1.3 million to $2.9 million. But by the looks of things, Sharks GM Doug Wilson doesn’t have to worry his young gun will do anything to jeopardize his rising star status in the summertime. You’re not going to find Couture on gossip website TMZ.com or on the cover of an X Games magazine. For the wild moves he can drop on opponents on the ice, he’s as mild as a spring breeze off it. “I guess I’m basically a homebody,” Couture said. “You want to take advantage of every minute and every day you get to spend with your loved ones because that time is so rare for you as a player. So I try my best to just relax and enjoy the time away before it’s time to get back to work and be the best hockey player I can possibly be.”

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