In their own words: Alex Killorn's day with the Stanley Cup

Throughout the year, tampabaylightning.com will periodically talk to Lightning players and coaches to get their first-hand account of a critical moment from the season or just what's on their mind currently.
In this installment, we hear from Alex Killorn, who celebrated his day with the Stanley Cup by taking hockey's holy grail to his hometown of Beaconsfield, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, Killorn parading the Cup around the city of the team the Lightning defeated to lift it.
Killorn broke his fibula in two places on a Monday blocking a shot from Montreal's Jeff Petry in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. Three days later on Thursday, he had a rod surgically inserted to repair the damaged limb. By Saturday, Killorn was skating again in an attempt to return for Game 4 of the Cup Final in a potential clinching scenario.
"That's how you win a Stanley Cup," a choked-up Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois said at his end of the season press conference.
As told to tampabaylightning.com beat writer Bryan Burns, Killorn talks about his day with the Cup, from being presented a key to his hometown, doing a little trolling outside the Bell Centre and capping the night with a private party on a posh hotel rooftop.

The Stanley Cup arrived first thing Friday morning, around 8:30 a.m. Our director of hockey operations Mathieu Darche had it the day before me. We were all gathered at my parents' house in Beaconsfield. I just got back to Montreal last week, so it was nice to see family. Hadn't seen my mom in a long time, maybe two years. And my sister had a baby. I hadn't even seen her pregnant, and now I get to meet her baby. It's been nice to see everyone. We took professional pictures with the Cup in the backyard, lots of photos so we could always remember the experience. And then we had some friends come over so they could get some photos with the Cup too.
Once that was over, we headed to Centennial Park, which is a park right across from the arena where I grew up skating. The city wanted to do a little ceremony for me, and they were excited I would take time out of my day to bring it to the park and share it with all the residents. The ceremony was open to the public, but you had to reserve a ticket in advance and there was a limit to the number of tickets distributed due to COVID-19 restrictions. I gave a speech to everybody who showed up. And then I think maybe the first 300 people got a picture with the Cup. I could see all the kids were so excited. I'm sure people were excited to see me, but the Cup itself is such a special trophy. They say it's the best trophy in sports for a reason. It was important for me to bring it back there because I know as a kid how much that would mean to me and to be able to bring it back was special because I knew it would mean a lot to those people. The mayor of Beaconsfield was at the ceremony too and gave a speech. And then they presented me with a key to the city, which was kind of a surprise. They had mentioned previously something like that might happen, but it was never really clear and I never actually thought they would. It's something I'll definitely bring down to my house in Tampa and put on my mantle. Pretty cool thing.
We took the Cup to my buddy's dad's sailboat that we would always go on when we were younger. He has a Dock Talk flag on the sailboat. When we got off the bus at the yacht club, there was a kids' camp that was right there. They were in such shock because they weren't expecting the Cup to be there, especially at this sail club or whatever it was. That was actually pretty funny. I think people are just always excited to see the Cup. When we'd walk from place to place on the street, people would just be in awe of the Cup. A person would be in the elevator, and we'd walk in with the Stanley Cup and they'd be caught by surprise like, 'Wait, wait, wait, what the hell is going on here?' Those were the best moments actually.
We headed over to Beaconsfield Golf Club where I play when I'm back here and had lunch there. It was a bit of a mess because the club was also hosting their biggest tournament of the year and all these people were there, so whenever someone saw the Cup, of course they wanted to get a picture with it. Made it kind of hard to eat lunch. We ended up playing four holes really quickly, just me and my best buddies. Whoever won got to hoist the Stanley Cup, so that was a cool little thing. Then we had another photo session at the course, so all my buddies that had kids and stuff and all of our close family friends came there to get a picture with the Cup.
Once we finished at the golf course, we headed back downtown to go to one of my favorite restaurants in Montreal, Gentille Pizza Parlour. And we were there for probably an hour and a half. That was another opportunity for me to see people and people to see the Cup because I had a party at 7 p.m. and not everyone could come because of Covid. The party was maxed out at 75, so all the people that couldn't make it, I kind of over the day had different events anyone could come to. And this was another event where some younger people and friends and family could go to if they wanted to grab some pizza and have some drinks.
This is also around the time I took the picture lifting the Cup outside the Bell Centre. I haven't really been on social media, but all my friends are telling me I'm taking some heat for that. The French media especially weren't too happy about it. I didn't travel to the Bell Centre to take this picture. We had 20 minutes at my condo so we could change before we went to the party. Right now, I'm staying at a place that's literally above the Bell Centre. Like it's connected to the Bell Centre, right across the street. It's not even a street. From my place, I could throw a ball and hit the Bell Centre. And so, we were just out there and that's a place where I kind of grew up watching hockey my whole life and that's where I kind of learned to love the game because I thought it was so cool to watch games there and I wanted to take a picture outside of it. Was it a little bit trolling? Maybe, but I wasn't trying to take away anything from the Canadiens or anything like that. But, whatever, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
The highlight of the day was the big party downtown at Hotel William Gray, which is a hotel in Montreal with a beautiful rooftop. The weather held up and that was the best. We had some entertainment. There were about 75 people. Not too many. It was perfect. If I didn't have the 75-person restriction, I probably would have invited way too many people. I'm really happy it was smaller because you got to spend time with everybody. I made sure I invited all of my coaches growing up that I was still in contact with. It was really important for me to invite them. I was cut a couple times when I was younger and there were a couple coaches who I thought really helped me out, so I wanted to make sure they were there. I had family that flew in. I had buddies from Harvard that flew in. Just really important people, the people that were my biggest fans and had some sort of part in helping me get to where I am today.
We didn't really eat anything crazy out of the Cup this time. I asked everyone if they wanted to do anything special, and there was nothing we could really think of. We were just happy to be with it. Last year I ate lobster bisque out of the cup at Bern's Steak House. And then I ate French onion soup out of it because I went to Bern's with the Cup twice. My favorite soup is the soup at Bern's. But I didn't really have anything else I wanted to eat out of it. Mathieu Joseph ate poutine out of the Cup this year. He had the Cup a couple days after me. It went from me to Julien BriseBois to Mathieu Joseph. I'm not really a French guy, so I can't do that. And Jo told me how much he wanted to do that, so I didn't want to steal his thunder.
The Cup has a curfew at midnight, so at 11:50, we left the hotel party and went to a bar across the street where we could kind of end the night with all my friends and family. We basically just walked in, stayed about 10 minutes and came right out. It was kind of weird to parade the Cup around Montreal considering we beat them to win it, but the Cup was always in a controlled environment. I might have been worried when we brought it to the bar at the end of the night, you never know if some intense Habs fan might throw a drink at you or something, but I was with quite the crew so I wasn't too concerned about anything like that. But the whole day was great. It was from 8 a.m to midnight where you didn't have even 10 minutes to relax. Even when you get to the party where you think you might relax, you still want to go talk to everyone. You want to be a good host. It was so much fun. It was just good to bring it back to Montreal because there had been so many people that hadn't seen it, especially you win it once but you win it twice and you can go a little bit crazier with the party and everything because you're making up for missing them the first time. But it was just so much fun.