Noah Hanifin , No. 3 on NHL Central Scouting's final ranking of the top North American skaters eligible for the 2015 NHL Draft, completed his freshman season at Boston College in Hockey East in 2014-15. The 6-foot-3, 203-pound left-shot defenseman had five goals and 23 points in 37 games. He also represented the United States at the 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship. He had eight goals and 33 points in 45 games for the United States National Team Development Program under-18 team in 2013-14. The native of Norwood, Mass., has offered to maintain a blog for NHL.com leading up to the 2015 NHL Draft in Sunrise, Fla. His latest entry comes after he was selected by the Carolina Hurricanes with the fifth pick.

What an amazing day.

I didn't really get too much sleep last night; so many nerves. You dream of this moment your whole life and this day was pretty surreal. It's definitely a relief to get it over with and know what organization I'll be representing in the future.

I got up probably at 8 a.m. and went downstairs to the breakfast with Commissioner Bettman and all the top guys. We saw the Stanley Cup and some highlights from the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and that was pretty cool. I met with two teams this morning, Carolina was one of them and it went really well.

Noah Hanifin, No. 3 on NHL Central Scouting's final ranking of the top North American skaters eligible for the 2015 NHL Draft, completed his freshman season at Boston College in Hockey East in 2014-15. The 6-foot-3, 203-pound left-shot defenseman had five goals and 23 points in 37 games. He also represented the United States at the 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship. He had eight goals and 33 points in 45 games for the United States National Team Development Program under-18 team in 2013-14. The native of Norwood, Mass., has offered to maintain a blog for NHL.com leading up to the 2015 NHL Draft in Sunrise, Fla. His latest entry comes from Marlins Park in Miami.

Greetings from Marlins Park.

We just got done batting practice here. It was the first time I've swung a bat since the summer going into my freshman year of high school. So the first two balls, I hit grounders. Then I hit a ground-rule double, right off the wall. I almost got one out; I think if I had pulled it a little more to the right it would have been out.

Lawson Crouse was the only one to hit a home run. He went first and he set the bar really high for us. But he's just a really big, strong guy. We kind of expected, if one guy was going to put one out it would be him.

Noah Hanifin, No. 3 on NHL Central Scouting's final ranking of the top North American skaters eligible for the 2015 NHL Draft, completed his freshman season at Boston College in Hockey East in 2014-15. The 6-foot-3, 203-pound left-shot defenseman had five goals and 23 points in 37 games. He also represented the United States at the 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship. He had eight goals and 33 points in 45 games for the United States National Team Development Program under-18 team in 2013-14. The native of Norwood, Mass., has offered to maintain a blog for NHL.com leading up to the 2015 NHL Draft in Sunrise, Fla. His latest entry comes from the 2015 NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo.

Hello from Buffalo.

I had my final few interviews Friday and they went great. I met with 13 teams here at the Combine. It was really nice to meet all the people who got to watch us all year. I thought all the interviews went well. There were a few I thought went exceptionally well, but you never know. They all kept a straight face and didn't give you any heads-up about what could happen. It makes the draft more exciting.

Any team that meets with you has to take the interview very serious because they don't know what's going to happen at the draft. There could be trades, people sliding down. It was a really good process.

Noah Hanifin, No. 3 on NHL Central Scouting's final ranking of the top North American skaters eligible for the 2015 NHL Draft, completed his freshman season at Boston College in Hockey East in 2014-15. The 6-foot-3, 203-pound left-shot defenseman had five goals and 23 points 37 games. He also represented the United States at the 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship. He had eight goals and 33 points in 45 games for the United States National Team Development Program under-18 team in 2013-14. The native of Norwood, Mass., has offered to maintain a blog for NHL.com leading up to the 2015 NHL Draft in Sunrise, Fla. His latest entry comes from the 2015 NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo.

Hello everyone. 

I arrived in Buffalo for the NHL Scouting Combine on Monday afternoon at about noon. It was a good flight in and since I had nothing scheduled that night, caught up with some of the guys who were here. I had two interviews on Tuesday and have 13 total interviews for the week.

The interviewing process is definitely done to retrieve some background information, but they do push you a little bit. The general managers or scouts will ask you some tough questions just to see how you react. I think that's a good thing. They need to get a better feel for the players. And from our perspective it's nice to get to know some of the scouts on the teams. It's been a great experience so far.

Noah Hanifin, No. 3 on NHL Central's final ranking of the top North American skaters eligible for the 2015 NHL Draft, completed his freshman season at Boston College in Hockey East in 2014-15. The 6-foot-3, 203-pound left-shot defenseman had five goals and 23 points 37 games. He also represented the United States at the 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship. He had eight goals and 33 points in 45 games for the United States Under-18 National Team Development Program in 2013-14. The native of Norwood, Mass., has offered to maintain a blog for NHL.com leading up to the 2015 NHL Draft in Sunrise, Fla. This latest entry came after his college hockey season.

Hi everyone!

I would say as a whole, I could not have been more grateful for my experience this first year at Boston College. Aside from obviously learning from some of the top minds in our game, what I appreciated most was learning a schedule of balance. The time dedicated to practice and training is a lot, but the demands our academics places on us can be difficult if you don't have your own system of balance in place.

Working with head coach (Jerry) York, coach (Greg) Brown and coach (Mike) Ayers has been extremely valuable. Coach Brown has a heavy hand in our defensive scheme, so I spent a lot of time working with him. Anytime you're able to learn from someone with the experiences he's had is so valuable.

That was tough.

Listening to their anthem at the end of the game isn’t the best way to go out. But it’s a learning process. You can learn a lot from that game. It just shows being undisciplined can hurt you in a tournament like this. Russia’s a good team so we had to be disciplined, and it didn’t really happen.

Noah Hanifin, who was given an A rating on NHL Central Scouting's November players to watch list, is a freshman at Boston College in Hockey East. The 6-foot-3, 203-pound defenseman, who has two goals and seven points in 17 games for the Eagles this season, was one of 30 players invited to the United States National Junior Team selection camp on the campus of Boston University from Dec. 16-19. He had eight goals and 33 points in 45 games for the United States Under-18 National Team Development Program in 2013-14. Hanifin, considered by many to be the best defenseman available at the 2015 NHL Draft, had one goal and five points for the United States at the IIHF 2014 World U-18 Championship. The native of Norwood, Mass., has offered to maintain a blog for NHL.com leading up to the 2015 NHL Draft in Sunrise, Fla. This latest entry came after the U.S. National Junior Team lost to Canada, 5-3, in preliminary-round action on Dec. 31.

Well, we lost a tough game [Wednesday]. Afterwards, our coach [Mark Osiecki] came in and asked 'How many of you have won a championship and gone undefeated?' The point was that it doesn't happen very often so we can learn a lot from that game. Both teams are in the next round and we'll focus on the next game [against Russia on Friday] but there's a lot we can learn from playing a great team like that.

I had a tough time sleeping last night because I was so excited about the game. I woke up pretty early, had breakfast and came back, stretched out a little bit and went for a warmup. Then we came over to [Bell Centre in Montreal] to get ready for the game.

It is absolutely freezing out. My family's in town now so we were actually walking around last night a little bit and we had to go back to the hotel a bit quicker than we expected. It was freezing out, but it's good hockey weather.

Slovakia played a really tough game against us. It was a great game. They're a good team. They beat Finland the day before so we knew it was going to be a hard game, but we were excited that we got to come out with the win (3-0).

Right when the game ended we all started to think about the game against Canada. That's just something we wanted to do every game, after every win focus on the next one and prepare as much as we can, so now it's Canada's turn, and we're just going to prepare as much as we can for them.

Slovakia was obviously a tough test. It was only 3-0 and it was a close game for most of it, but I thought we did a really good job of sticking to the game plan. I think that's the reason we ended up getting three goals. We really just wanted to pressure them below the goal line in the offensive zone, get pucks north, and I think when we were doing that we were all over them. So I think we did a great job coming in today and preparing well.

One of the things we wanted to focus on was taking it day by day, getting better every day as a team, and obviously three wins represents that. We did a good job of that and obviously we have one more to go and Canada's going to be a great test for us, so we're excited.

It's going to be unbelievable. It's going to be a great experience for our team, but I think we really just need to focus on our systems and what we need to do to beat Canada. It's going to be a great atmosphere and stuff, but we have a lot of work to do in the next few days just to get ready for them.

When I was really young, I played in a summer tournament with the Junior Bruins right outside of Montreal. I remember little parts of it. I was probably 10 years old, so this is the first time being back.

It's been awesome so far. It's a crazy city. It's really fun. There are a lot of people walking around and a lot of stores everywhere. It's really up-tempo and it's great being here.

I was a little nervous coming up here around this time of year. I thought it was going to be cold, but it hasn't been too bad, so that's nice.