The time off has been nice. Whenever you get a little bit of a break, there's pros and cons, and you get to reset a little bit and regroup after a couple tough rounds, get healthy a little bit, but you also want to get back into the rhythm and the game and start playing again. We had a few tough practices back in Vegas. It's nice to finally get a practice underway here in Raleigh and get it going tomorrow.
As for the anticipation of waiting for an opponent, once we won the Western Conference Final, we had a good idea we were going to be playing Carolina based off the situation, but that's probably been the toughest part, the anticipation. You want to get out and get going so bad and you have to kind of wait, but now it's almost 24 hours away so it's getting close.
As for tonight, we'll probably just chill and go back to the hotel. We'll have a meal probably at the hotel, watch a movie, kind of hang out as a group of guys. Sometimes it's nice to start on the road because you can get right down to it, spend some time together and try to steal a game on the road.
As for movies we like to watch, we usually go with comedies, a lot of Will Ferrell movies like "Step Brothers" or "Wedding Crashers" or something like that. So, it's good. It's nice to chill with everybody.
I was here for a couple of years, I started my career out here, I learned a lot in Carolina as a young kid, so it is kind of full circle coming back. I'm playing in my first Final with Vegas here in Carolina, but there's been a lot of turnover in that group. There are only a few guys that I played with when I was here, but it's pretty cool.
As for winning the Stanley Cup and Olympic gold medal in the same year, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't in the back of my head, but at the end of the day, that's the challenge to just try to stay present. Sometimes, it's hard when you're in a Cup Final to look ahead and look at the possibilities of outcomes, but really just trying to stick with the process. Take it one day at a time. Sometimes before Game 1 you get all hyped up, but it's a long series. It can be a couple of weeks, so we just have to take it one day at a time and get ourselves going off on the right foot.
