TAMPA --What a day. What a whirlwind. What a terrific time.
Everything about Saturday here at 2018 Honda NHL All-Star Weekend was amazing, but ultimately the highlight of the day for me was seeing the smile and the wide eyes on my 7-year-old son, Jonny.
He follows the game and he's a fan of the players. He cheers for the Lightning, but he's a fan of the players. For him to get to meet the guys, that was special.
One of the best things was him getting to meet Erik Karlsson. There's a story to this one.
So, we play the Ottawa Senators and he goes, "Do you know, Erik Karl-s-son." He said the two Ss. We let it go for the longest time and my wife and I would joke about it, and when we met Erik today he said it and everybody started laughing, including Erik. It was great.
But that's it. Seeing him have so much fun, that's the moment. The other part of it is Brad Marchand was talking to him quite a bit and then he went and got his kid, Sloane, who is eight. The two of them became inseparable. They were looking for each other the whole time. They sat with each other and filmed stuff together.
Who knows if those kids will ever meet up with each other again, but they had a blast together.
This day, though, it was unreal.
Media Day in the morning brought back memories of the Stanley Cup Final, which obviously are great memories. The autograph signing I did and seeing the passion of all the fans, how thankful they were, was tremendous. Then coming into the rink, you get to go be a regular guy with the guys that you go to war against. They've all got a great story.
Everybody has such huge respect for everybody in the room, but I take a step back and I look at them and I'm like, 'They're all just kids.' It's pretty cool to watch that, to watch them, and know that you're surrounded by the best players in the world.
What a unique, unbelievable experience it was. But there's more. There's still the All-Star Game on Sunday.
I'm looking forward to seeing the Lightning players playing with other players and being a little creative to see who meshes with who, is there synergy in the talents. It's the All-Star Game. The guys are here for fun, but I know the competitors in them. They also want to win.
It's been a really relaxed atmosphere, but I'm looking forward to seeing these guys turn it up a notch.
