Oakland A's closer Liam Hendriks inherently knows a thing or two about baseball, and its corresponding struggles.
He's also an avid NHL fan, participating in four different fantasy hockey leagues.
That's why Hendriks, who dramatically went from being designated for assignment to MLB All-Star in a span of 12 months, can truly empathize and relate to the challenges Sharks goalie Martin Jones is enduring right now.
"It's really hard to climb the mountain to get to the confidence spectrum," Hendriks shared at spring training. "And it's real easy to slip down"
The job of a baseball closer is not that much different than a hockey goalie's.
"I've drawn comparisons before," Hendriks said. "As a reliever, you can have one mishap in a game and it completely changes that entire month and season for you, necessarily. Same for a goalie, you can be on fire all night, have 30 saves, and it's that one that squeaks through that can be the deciding factor."
Hendriks then continued with differences, showing off his full hockey prowess: "As a pitcher, we don't have to deal with re-directs, or traffic out front or anything ..."
So, the big questions remain: How did Hendriks rebound even stronger from one of the deepest and darkest times of his career? And how could any of that help Jones? Is it mostly physical, or something else?
"Emotional turmoil is one of the hardest things to pick up on, and then rectify," Hendriks stated. "It all depends on the way you approach the aftermath of this sort of setback, or whatever you want to call it. But you need to remain positive in my eyes. When I went down there (to the minors), it was like, if I'm going out ... it's going to be on my terms. I'm going to do exactly what I think I need to do, to be the best version of myself."
Hendriks latched onto hockey, and specifically the Montreal Canadiens while playing for the Toronto Blue Jays earlier in his career. But says the Sharks are his "American team."
[RELATED: How Sharks can address goalie problem at trade deadline]
He also has a much more superstitious fix that maybe Jones should try.
"Change his jersey number, that helped me out. Thirty-one had too many runs in it for me."
Yes, Hendriks -- like Jones -- wore No. 31 for Oakland before being DFA'd. He came back wearing No. 16, and he hasn't looked back since.
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