Kevin Fiala is writing a blog for NHL.com as the Los Angeles Kings visit Melbourne, Australia, in the NHL’s first event in the Southern Hemisphere. The Kings will play the Arizona Coyotes in two preseason games at Rod Laver Arena on Saturday and Sunday. The games will start at 12 a.m. ET and air on NHL Network and ESPN+ in the United States; Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ in Canada; and 9Go, 9Now, ESPN and the ESPN App in Australia.
Today, in his second entry, the forward writes about the Kings’ first practice of training camp.
DOCKLANDS, Australia -- This was not a normal first practice of training camp. In other ways, it was.
We reported to our locker room at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne in the morning. We got some treatments and warmed up off the ice. Then we put on all of our equipment, except for our skates. We boarded a bus and took about a 20-minute ride to O’Brien Icehouse for practice.
I’ve done the dress-and-drive before. I’m sure everybody has done it before. It reminds me of playing for Switzerland at the IIHF World Championship. It’s a little special. It’s fun, actually.
But when we put on our skates at O’Brien Icehouse and got on the ice, it was like a normal first day of camp. It was business. We worked hard. The intensity, the work, the quality was there. Everything was there, but we just happened to be in Australia.
We have some new guys like center Pierre-Luc Dubois and forward Trevor Lewis, so we worked on some basic stuff like the forecheck and zone entries. We also just did a lot of up and down the ice for conditioning.
I’m not sure the bus will smell too good on the ride back.
After practice, we took off our skates and walked back out to the bus. The sun was shining, it was 78 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was only 1 p.m. local time. We had the whole day ahead of us.
I’m sure we’re going to eat lunch somewhere and discover the city a little bit. I want to go to the zoo -- maybe not today, tomorrow probably -- because I’ve heard this country has a lot of animals I’ve never seen before. I’m looking forward to that.
