Demko: Making the interview rounds at Combine

Goalie Thatcher Demko completed his freshman season at Boston College in 2013-14. The 6-foot-3, 190-pounder went 16-5-3 with a 2.24 goals-against average and .919 save percentage, and earned All Hockey East Rookie Team honors and Hockey East honorable mention. Demko, who played his minor hockey in southern California before joining the United States National Team Development Program in 2012-13, is No. 1 on NHL Central Scouting's final list of the top North American goalies eligible for the 2014 NHL Draft. He has offered to maintain a blog for NHL.com that will chronicle his season leading up to the 2014 NHL Draft.

Hello, hockey fans!

It's Thursday afternoon at the NHL Scouting Combine and I'm just a bit tired.

I'm still in the middle of the interviewing phase, and needless to say some of the questions are becoming a little repetitive. But I guess that's the nature of the interviewing process as all the teams want to know the same information.

It's definitely been an interesting experience just to see what teams are looking for. I've enjoyed the week though, especially getting the opportunity to see some friends. That's been really cool to catch up with them and hang out with them.

The fitness testing is on the horizon, and I know that's an important part to all this. I'm sure a lot of guys have been training hard, like I've been doing, for the past month or two. I was in the gym [Wednesday] night just to make sure I'm doing what I can to stay in shape, because you don't want your body to fall asleep on you. But while the fitness testing is in the back of my mind, you still have to take it a day at a time.

Maybe the toughest thing this week has been the questioning, because they kind of stump you and trick you and then wait for your reaction. They want to try and get under your skin to see how you will respond. They tell you what your weaknesses are and then wait for your reaction and responses. Some of those questions are hard to answer just because of the awkwardness of the question.

There aren't many people here from [Boston College], but I've kept in contact with some the guys back at B.C. like Steve Santini and Michael Matheson. Those guys have been through this, as has Ian McCoshen, and they're curious to know if my experience is the same as it was for them. They've been supporting me through it from a distance and that's been really cool.

I had an interview with the Boston Bruins [Thursday], and a lot of the guys from school have been texting me and asking me how everything went. There are a lot of guys on the team from Massachusetts. We went to a few Bruins games this year, so they were excited to hear about how things went. It was another interview and it was great meeting with them.

Well, that's it for now. I'll file another blog after the fitness testing on Saturday.

Follow Thatcher Demko on Twitter at: @thatcher_hockey