2020 All-Star Diary: Travis Konecny

Philadelphia Flyers forward Travis Konecny is keeping a diary for the 2020 Honda NHL All-Star Game in St. Louis. Konecny finished in seventh place with a time of 14.113 in the Bridgestone NHL Fastest Skater in the 2020 NHL All-Star Skills presented by New Amsterdam Vodka at Enterprise Center on Friday. In his first entry, Konecny reflects on his first All-Star Skills competition and looks forward to his first All-Star Game on Saturday.

ST. LOUIS -- I was definitely nervous coming into the All-Star Skills on Friday. It was my first one.
Mathew Barzal was at the All-Star Game last year and he was still nervous this year, so it was understandable.
Starting out in the first event, the fastest skater, was a lot of fun. A lot of nerves though.
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You start off the competition and right off the bat you start skating and, obviously, I wasn't anywhere near the winners, but it was definitely a lot of fun. I could see my parents in the crowd right by the start line, so it was pretty cool.
I just had fun with it. If you watched, I probably wasn't crossing over very much. I just wanted to stay on my feet. I enjoyed it.
It was good to see Barzal win it. I think everyone was surprised that Connor McDavid didn't win, but there's a lot of fast guys in the League.
Barzal was on the bench with us, so we were joking about it the whole time. I knew he had a chance. He's a pretty quick guy.

A lot of these guys I haven't met before, so it was a lot of fun putting some characters to some of the names I wasn't sure about before. I was looking forward to meeting pretty much everybody. I don't know anybody. This is my first event outside the Flyers, so it was pretty cool.
It's the same with the All-Star Game. I'm not too sure what to expect. I'm just looking forward to having fun.
It's not competitive, but at some point I'm sure the guys will want to win a bit. The winning team splits $1 million, so we'll see how it plays out. I have no clue who I will play with.
I just want to try to soak it all in and enjoy it and spend some time with my family. I want to make sure they enjoy it too. They deserve this as much as I do, so it's going to be a fun weekend.