I'm excited. Especially playing against Toronto and being in Canada. I'm going to have some family there, too, which is going to be fun. All the guys are excited. It's finally here. We've all been waiting for this, and it's been circled on our calendar for a while.
We played Toronto last week so I think it should be a good game. They're obviously going to come out hard after we beat them last game, and they beat us early on in the season. We've been playing good hockey recently. I think they'll be looking for revenge and we'll come out hard but if we stick to our game, we should be successful. I think it's huge that we got a big win on Thursday against Vegas. We've got a lot of momentum going into this game. We saw how we can play and how good of a team we can be.
There's a lot of excitement in our room for this weekend. You get to dress up a little bit, like you've seen teams do in the past. That's always fun. It's a whole different experience, playing outdoors, and weather conditions should hopefully be good. That's another thing. I think practice will be fun just to get on the ice. It's going to be cold, but it'll be a lot of fun.
I'm most looking forward to just taking it all in, take in the experience. We've got a family skate. That's always fun. My family's excited to come and get to go on the ice with a lot of the other players. I think it'll be a cool experience for them and everyone else, having your kids on the ice skating around. And just the game itself, it's an NHL game, it counts in the standings, so it's nothing different but at the same time it's a fun experience for everyone. It's a big opportunity for our team to play well and do well. It's going to be on TV, obviously, and a lot of fans will be there so hopefully we can have a good game.
I played at the Frozen Fenway in 2017 when I was at Providence College. That was fun. The ice wasn't that good when we played but it was a good experience. Being at a baseball diamond, it was a little different. I feel like it was tough viewing for a lot of the fans. I've never been to a Canadian Football League stadium before so I'm not sure how it's going to look, but I think it'll be a lot better venue and experience.
I had a rink in my yard growing up. My dad always did a really good job putting it up. My cousin, Mitch Vande Sompel, who plays for the Bridgeport Islanders, we would always go head- to head, one on one out there. And then I have a little brother as well, so we would always spend hours every night out there after school. It was fun to have, and it's going to bring back a lot of memories skating outside.
