from Sonny Sachdeva of Sportsnet,

Kurtis Gabriel’s voice still quickens when he recalls the hours spent in the garage. It was back in 2021 that the long-time pro first pulled up to Satoshi Takano’s house in Etobicoke, Ont., first stood among the machines and the wires, and had his mind opened.

On the cusp of a dream opportunity with his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs, Gabriel had connected with Takano over social media and, hunting for something that could take his game to a higher level before he debuted in blue and white, he decided to give Takano’s cognitive performance training a go.

The next thing he knew, he was whirling around in a blur of lights and other stimuli that pulled his attention in all directions as Takano took him through a series of complex drills designed to test the limits of his vision, reaction time, and ability to mentally map his environment.

Before long, the winger was hooked.

“First of all, it’s fun. I mean, that’s number one,” Gabriel says of what had him rapt that first day in the garage. “It’s an extremely competitive training environment, and it’s you versus yourself. … It’s so multifaceted — you have the obvious vision training, cognitive training, mental stamina. But also, you make mistakes and you get such instant feedback. And it being so competitive, you want to not mess up. But it’s inevitable, you’re going to mess up just like anything in life, and it’s just an instant reminder every single rep to forget the last rep, focus in, get present and attempt it again.”

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