I had never been to Vancouver before and the city is unbelievable; it's gorgeous actually. The views and mountains, downtown area and hotel is beautiful. The Canadian Hockey League did a good job here with the whole event, including the testing and game. To have an opportunity to work with the legends behind the bench with Don Cherry and Brian Sutter was a great experience. The talks I had with them will go a long way and I appreciate everything they did for us. They wanted to see us be successful and that was great. We lost the game 3-2, but I had a lot of fun.
Mr. Cherry wasn't too crazy in the locker room with his talks. He let assistants Brian Sutter and Brian Kilrea run the bench. Mr. Cherry was a good voice back there and fun to meet. He's such a well-known guy.
I thought it was a great crowd. It's always awesome playing for an energetic crowd as it was on at the Top Prospects Game. Just being in a rink like Pacific Coliseum with such history since it used to be an NHL rink, was pretty awesome. The father of my best buddy, Logan Brown, used to play in this rink for the Vancouver Canucks. It's pretty cool now knowing this is a CHL rink in a CHL city; I'm pretty jealous.
I thought I did pretty well in the
testing portion of Prospects week
. I take a lot of pride in my work ethic, trying to be the best I can in every aspect of the sport. It was nice to see it pay off and nice to see my teammate Jordan Kyrou finish first in the on-ice testing. We came here together, roomed together and we wanted to have fun with the experience and I think we did a good job with that. I had a few of my best friends here as well so. I got together with the family of Logan Brown, in fact, and went out for a steak dinner with our parents the night before the game.
It was exciting to serve as a captain for Team Cherry. It's unfortunate Vancouver forward Tyler Benson was injured and couldn't serve as the captain, but leadership is something I've always taken pride in and it was an honor for me to be captain of such a highly skilled team.
Finally, people have been asking for my Super Bowl prediction, so I think posting here on my blog is as good a place as any.
I'm a big Cam Newton fan. I just love his confidence. I think you can take it either way, as confidence or cockiness, but either way I like it. He was drafted first overall in 2011 by the Carolina Panthers and in five years they almost finished with an undefeated season. That was due to him and that says a lot. Everything he has done for the kids of that community is something I really look up to as well.
That said, I'm picking the Panthers.
Thanks for reading.
