Jones discusses No. 1 ranking at midterm

Seth Jones is a defenseman for the Portland Winterhawks of the Western Hockey League. The 6-foot-4, 205-pound defenseman has solid athletic bloodlines -- his father, Popeye Jones, played 11 seasons in the NBA. Jones excelled the last two seasons for the U.S. National Team Development Program and won a gold medal with the United States at the 2013 World Junior Championship. Jones has offered to maintain a monthly blog for NHL.com that will chronicle his season leading up to the 2013 NHL Draft.

Hi everyone!

I just finished up the on-ice testing, so I figured I'd provide some idea what my time has been like leading up to the Top Prospects Game on Wednesday.

During the testing on Tuesday, it was just a matter of going out there and competing a little bit and prove to the scouts and to everyone watching that you deserve to be in this class and just go out do the testing and see what happens.

My roommate here in Halifax is [Portland Winterhawks teammate] Oliver Bjorkstrand. I normally don't room with him on the road, so this is a first. But he's a really good guy, a little quiet and obviously European. Bottom line is if he wasn't quiet I'd ask for a room change, so we're all good.

As far as the testing goes, the on-ice was a little more difficult than the off-ice, which is basically vertical jump, broad jump and little agility testing and medicine ball throws. With the on-ice, you had to think a little bit more and there was one reactionary test where you had to see what color a light was [red or green] and decide which direction you had to go. That was probably the most difficult thing.

I've been asked a lot of questions over the last few days, but the media always looks for that  horse raceevery year. There was Taylor [Hall] and Tyler [Seguin] and then [Nail] Yakupov and [Ryan] Murray last year, so they're always looking for that and that's fine for them, but I don't look into that stuff too much.

I know the midterm rankings were released [Tuesday] morning and it was awesome to be at the top. It's very exciting. Any time you're considered No. 1 in the world it's an awesome thing, but that's not the draft and just something the scouts put together. It's an opinion, and I'm just looking to get better the remainder of the season.

I'm just now starting to get over the World Junior Championship and our gold medal victory. The time changes are always a tough thing to handle -- going all the way back to Portland [from Russia] and then coming four hours back [to Halifax] was tough. But we were here a day early Sunday night, so I'm pretty well rested right now and ready for the big game.

Thanks for reading!

Follow Seth Jones on Twitter at: @seth_jones04