In his first entry, Perunovich, who is from Hibbing, Minnesota, talks about the thrill of playing his first NHL outdoor game in his home state, his experience playing an outdoor game for the United States at the 2018 IIHF World Junior Championship, and what this all means to him.
I'm super excited. It's always good to be back in Minnesota and playing against [the Wild] for the first time in the regular season. It should be pretty special. I'll have a lot of friends and family there, so I know it will be special for them too.
I seriously could not ask for a better scenario being from Hibbing. Everything for this has been so perfect and for this to pan out how it's been has been incredible, and I'm just so fortunate to be in this situation.
I think it's huge for the state of Minnesota. Obviously, we're the "State of Hockey" and they love their hockey there. To be able to bring it and have it there is just so awesome. I'm sure they're all excited for it.
As far as my experience, I did get to play in an outdoor game in Buffalo [at the World Junior Championship on Dec. 29, 2017, against Canada]. It was cold and windy and snowing pretty hard. We had all the conditions out there. It was such a fun game to play in, probably top three, top four most fun games to play in. It was definitely an unbelievable experience for everyone involved and they did a good job there.
I basically grew up on outdoor rinks. Every day after school I was on an outdoor rink for five, six hours every day, so I'm definitely used to playing outside, but not something like this. So it should be pretty exciting and I'm not sure people understand how cold it's really going to be, but I'm from Northern Minnesota, I went to college in Duluth [University of Minnesota Duluth], so I'm used to the cold, but I don't think I'll be used to this.
