Today was good. It was another busy morning starting with Fan Fest again, seeing all the fans there and doing some stuff with Discover this morning, which was great. Then coming here to FLA Live Arena, it was great walking the red carpet before the skills competition. It was hot but it was fun, and I thought it turned out well. Everything's been pretty awesome.
It was a great day seeing all the Skills and doing a couple of the goalie stuff in the Tendy Tandem event and then doing the big Breakaway Challenge at the end, which I thought was awesome.
Elias Pettersson of the Vancouver Canucks had a bomb of a slap shot; that was crazy. And it was great seeing little (Sergei) Ovechkin out there in the Breakaway Challenge. That's what I was like, and my brother Brady of the Ottawa Senators was like when we were younger, so that was cool. There were just so many great players and seeing guys that are way faster than me in the Fastest Skater event do their thing was pretty cool too.
I thought doing a beach thing for the Breakaway Challenge worked out well. I love being able to show off Florida, and I just think everybody's really enjoying it.
It was great to have everybody help me out. It was awesome to be able to involve my teammate Aleksander Barkov, as well as Panthers legend Roberto Luongo and Miami Dolphins player Christian Wilkins. That stuff kind of happened at the last minute, and it was really awesome to get them involved and I thought the fans loved it.
My family had a little bit of an idea of what I was going to do, but not everything, so I'm excited to see their reaction to it. And it's awesome having my family down here this week. They're really enjoying themselves and I'm looking forward to spending some time with them outside the rink.
As I look toward the All-Star Game itself, I'm just excited to play with 'Barky' and my brother on the same team for the Atlantic Division. Hopefully we get a few shifts together, and hopefully we get a win.
