Ryan Murray expecting the unexpected come Draft day

Defenseman Ryan Murray is captain of the Everett Silvertips in the Western Hockey League. The 6-foot, 182-pound native of Saskatchewan won a bronze medal playing for Team Canada at the 2012 World Junior Championship and was also the second-youngest player to ever appear for Canada at the Men's World Championship. Despite his busy schedule, Murray will log his experiences leading up to the 2012 NHL Draft in Pittsburgh this week for NHL.com.

Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by to read my blog once again.

Well, here we are -- it’s finally draft week. The past year has actually flown by with so much going on, and the draft kind of snuck up on me, to be honest. It’s been a really fun and exciting year leading up to this point, and now I’m just excited to see what’s going to happen on Friday [in the first round]. I’d have to say I’m also a little bit nervous and anxious, but mostly just looking forward to the draft.

I’ll be getting into Pittsburgh late [on Tuesday] and will have a couple of busy days ahead of me before Friday comes around. My family [parents and siblings] and my billet from Everett will be in town with me as well. It will definitely be cool having them all there and getting to share this experience with them.

This will be my first visit to Pittsburgh. I’ve heard great things about it being a nice city and the CONSOL Energy Center being a beautiful rink. I know they’ve got quite a few activities planned for us and we might even get to take batting practice at PNC Park [home of the Pirates], so that would be really cool to do. I’m looking forward to getting there, seeing everything and getting started.

For me, it seems like this draft is pretty unpredictable. I really have no clue where I’ll end up going, and I don’t really think the other guys do either. Anything can happen on Friday, that’s for sure. I think there’s definitely going to be some things happen that nobody will expect. That seems to be how it goes on draft day. It’s happened in previous years and this year will probably be no different.

Right now I think I’m just looking forward to Friday and getting to the draft itself. It’s something that everybody has been waiting for and excited about for a long time now. It’s hard to imagine the moment when I get drafted, going up to the stage and putting the jersey on.

I’ve watched the draft every year since I was a little kid, and it’s still hard to think of myself going up and doing that. I think it will probably just kind of hit me once I’m there in the building on Friday and everything is unfolding in front of me. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens when 7 p.m. [ET] rolls around.

Thanks again for reading my blog and I’ll see you on Friday!