HELSINKI -- It's been fun to be here in Helsinki and we've had some time during the first few days of this trip to see the city.
On Monday, our off-day, we were able to sleep in a bit, and me and Blake Wheeler grabbed lunch at this old market hall. It was pretty cool, unlike anything I've seen in the United States, with a bunch of different types of shops in there and you make your own meal out of it. Pretty cool.
We came back and hung out for a bit, then we went to Loyly, a sauna place on the Gulf of Finland. They had a bunch of different types of saunas in there. When you come out of the sauna you're supposed to go into the cold so they have a dock right there and you jump in the water. We all did that and it was freezing and my feet were numb but that was pretty cool.
The sun had already set and it was cloudy and it was kind of cool looking out to sea and not seeing a whole lot and jumping in the water, not really knowing what was coming. We had dinner there and we had some elk meatballs that were fantastic and some pumpkin risotto that was really good. We have tried some new things food-wise this week, but jumping in the Gulf of Finland, that's something I probably will never get to do again, so that was kind of cool.
One of the most important things I've been trying to figure out this week is the sleep.
Tuesday I had five coffees so I didn't nap during the day. I'm not a coffee drinker at all so five was a lot for me. We practiced in the morning and got a little bag skate on at the end just to clean out the legs and clean it out of us a little bit.
We went back to the hotel and me and Tyler Myers and Blake Wheeler grabbed lunch at some little place near our hotel. I had the reindeer stew, which was interesting and really, really good. I'm not sure how well it's sitting in my stomach right now but it was fantastic when I had it.
I grabbed a couple more coffees after that and then me and Jacob Trouba went into this big cathedral near the hotel and there was an all-boys, 100-person choir going on so we sat down and listened for about 15 minutes. It was a really interesting place.
A bunch of us had dinner last night and then me and Jacob came back and we've been into this show, "The Man in the High Castle" right now. It's about if the U.S. had lost World War II and the Germans were running the eastern part of the United States and the Japanese were running the western part. Really interesting stuff. We've been crushing a couple episodes of that a night.
I slept better Tuesday night; only woke up for an hour before getting back to sleep. Maybe tonight's the night I'll go right through, get a full sleep. I think practicing later might help with that because we won't be killing time all afternoon. We'll have dinner and be back by about 9 and that should do it.
I'm back playing center right now, on a line with Jack Roslovic and Brendan Lemieux. I was pretty comfortable in the Toronto game (a 3-2 loss Saturday), and I have played a lot of center, mostly center, in my career. I feel confident about playing center and I don't really care who I'm against. Hopefully we get some chemistry. I thought we played well in the last two periods of the Toronto game, had some really good chances. We'll see how that goes.
It'll be interesting to see what the crowds are going be like for these Global Series games. I'm sure it'll be packed and they'll be into the game for sure but who they're cheering for and what they're cheering, it's kind of an unknown right now.
International hockey can be a different thing. I know what to expect when Team USA is playing against Germany in Germany. But tomorrow, I don't know exactly what to expect. It will be a cool event for sure.
