The game was awesome. It’s a great building to play in, a lot of fun, a lot of energy. I think it’s good to get that first one under our belts. There’s always nerves and excitement before you play Game 1, so it was good to kind of see each other and get a win tonight.
Today, I just did my normal routine. Skated this morning, pregame meal, nap and once I got to the rink, I just did my normal routine. Just warm up and do my thing.
I was able to treat it like a normal game. Just have to stay in the moment, stay present in these types of situations.
Even when Carolina scored 25 seconds into the game and took a 2-0 lead, we kept it together because we have a real poised group, we didn’t panic. We know it’s a tough building. They always make good pushes early in games, so I think our guys did a really good job of just bracing for that and handling that and then we got to our game.
This is my first Stanley Cup game, so I definitely have not been in a game like that under those conditions, but it was a competitive game, back and forth and I think our guys did a really good job of sticking with it and digging in at the end and getting the job done.
We could definitely feel the energy of the game. It’s a loud building, but I think after the first few minutes, once you kind of get into the game, you start to get pretty focused.
As for tomorrow on the off day, I don’t know what our schedule is yet, but I’m sure we’ll just meet and kind of go over some video and like I always say, in these series you have to get better every game, so there are probably going to be some things we can improve on and get better and get ready for Thursday.
In the first blog, I mentioned we would watch a movie before Game 1. We watched “Big Daddy,” the Adam Sandler movie. Great flick. I actually don’t know who picked the movie last night. Usually, it’s (Tomas) Hertl, he has a lot of movies on his iPad.
