Desjardins: Got some rest, good eats, ready to go

Chicago Blackhawks forward Andrew Desjardins will be blogging for NHL.com periodically throughout the Stanley Cup Final against the Tampa Bay Lightning. In this edition, he discusses what he did on a rare day off with two full days off before Game 2 at Amalie Arena on Saturday.

TAMPA -- Having two off days between games can be nice because you can split them into two separate categories.

Priority No. 1 Thursday was to kind of rest your body, get some good eats, get the right things into your body, hydrate.

But also to just sleep and rest. It's always hard to sleep after games. Every game's different, but sometimes you don't get to bed until 3 or 4 in the morning, for myself. So I try to sleep in, but it's kind of hard to sleep in sometimes. So I got up, ate breakfast, and went back to sleep.

As far as getting some good eats, I guess I was kind of being a loner last night but I went to Bern's Steakhouse, which is a legendary place here in Tampa, but I'd never been there before.

I got six oysters, they were delicious. I actually have a slight shellfish allergy, but I love shellfish. I've figured it out and I know how much I can eat, but I don't touch shrimp, lobster, crab, any crustaceans. Oysters, mussels, those kinds of things are alright.

Then I had the beef carpaccio. I actually just went there for appetizers originally, but it kind of turned into a full-out meal. After the carpaccio, it was outstanding, so I was like, 'Wow. Might as well get a steak.'

I got the smallest one they had, and I really made a mistake not getting the mushrooms. I should have got the steakhouse mushrooms. I saw them coming out after getting my steak and I knew I kind of blew it on that one.

I got there early at like 5:15 or so just because I was so hungry, I didn't really have lunch, so I was back at the hotel pretty early and talked to my family back home before getting to bed.

Friday, the focus shifted to Game 2 and back to hockey instead of recovery.

We were happy to get the win in Game 1 but we weren't satisfied with our start. I think we have to improve every game as the series goes on, that's the goal. There are certain things that we touched on systematically, but I'm not going to get into that. It's just to be ready for the start, we emphasized that after what happened in Game 1.

They came out flying. It was pretty predictable, the speed, the puck movement, the quickness they came out with came through in the first period. We still did a good job of staying calm and not giving them more than they got, and that was huge for us.

But in Game 2, it's going to be important not to put ourselves back in that same situation.