Tatar Felt Like He Was in Video Game on 1st Day in NHL | STALL MATES

It should come as no surprise to anyone how competitive NHL athletes are. It's part of what has brought them to the point of being able to play at the highest level in the world.
"I was nervous as hell, it was crazy," Tatar recalls of being called up to the Detroit Red Wings for the first time.
And who can blame him, not only are you on your way to play in the National Hockey League but for Tatar, he was walking into a locker room filled with some of, not just the greatest leaders the game has seen, but some of the best players the game has ever seen.
"Everything happened so fast for me and I pretty much came from the Slovakian league straight to the Detroit Red Wings locker room. My first game I was playing with (Pavel) Datsyuk, (Henrik) Zetterberg, and (Niklas) Lidstrom. It was it was crazy. I was just so nervous because I felt like I'm living in an EA Sports NHL game."
If playing in a first NHL game with players of the ilk of Niklas Lidstrom and Henrik Zetterberg wasn't enough, imagine how Tatar felt when he looked around the locker room for the first time.
This was reality, not some video game. There, next to his own nameplate was that of, the Magic Man, Pavel Datsyuk.
Tatar's first stall mate.

"I was just trying to look at him and everything that he was doing," Tatar recalls, "I wanted to be as close as possible, be the same. You know even with him being Russian and me being Slovak, I feel like we bonded a lot. It's simply, we were close countries and we understand each other from a nature perspective. So, it was nice."

Nice perhaps until Tatar realized how competitive Datsyuk really was. Sitting next to him in the locker room may have been helpful both coming from similar parts of the world, but Datsyuk didn't get to where he was without an intense competitive nature. And next thing Tatar knew, everything, sitting next to Datsyuk, would become a game of sorts, fueling his ambitious drive.
"We always played these mini-games, you know he was so competitive," Tatar shared, "I remember when we walked into a dressing room and you have your jersey, it's hanging on a hanger. Pav would set a point (in the room), and we'd have to take the hanger and throw it and play whoever will be closest to that point. We would mark a dot and someone would have to be closer to the dot with the hangers. It's just those little things, we always played some sort of game.
"It was always something," Tatar added emphatically, "We always were doing something competitive, it was fun."
Tatar's first NHL locker room was filled with veterans, the Red Wings were in the midst of what would become 25 straight seasons in the playoffs. Tatar was just 20 years old in his first season and although on one side of his stall was the great Datsyuk, he had a little reprieve with someone closer in age to him on the other.
"Justin Abdelkader was the next guy by me and he was almost my age. He's a little older, but I was pretty much the youngest guy by far at that time in the locker room so I was hanging out with a little bit older guys."
Now in the Devils locker room, the roles are reversed. At 32 years old, he is the second oldest member of the Devils locker room, a year younger than Brendan Smith, both of whom started their careers in the Red Wings organization, amongst some of the game's top leaders.
When it came to pregame routines, some athletes have a routine that can't be interrupted and has to be executed to a T, yet surprisingly, Datsyuk didn't seem to have anything too rigid that Tatar had to be aware of. What stood out most was just how well-prepared he was for every night.
"Pav, he was always an extremely hard-working guy. which was great to see of a superstar. They don't mess around, they work really hard. I think they pointed me in the right direction."
It's clear where Tatar's drive comes from. If you see him participating in pre-game soccer, you know there is no one who wants to win more. Smith is on-par with Tatar, perhaps a reflection of growing up in a locker room like that of the Red Wings amongst the leagues best of the time.
Of the superstars in the Wings locker room Tatar said "I wanted to be just like them."

Read past Stall Mates:
Sergei Brylin
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Ken Daneyko
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Scott Gomez
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Brendan Smith