The Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils are set to face off in the 2024 NHL Global Series Czechia presented by Fastenal, starting the regular season with two games at O2 Arena in Prague on Friday and Saturday. The Sabres have been in Prague since Sunday after a four-night trip to Munich for the 2024 NHL Global Series Challenge Germany presented by Fastenal, defeating EHC Red Bull Munchen 5-0 in a preseason game at SAP Garden on Sept. 27.
Sabres defenseman Owen Power has been keeping a blog with NHL.com throughout the Global Series, giving fans a taste of what life is like on the ground as they go through the Global Series experience. Power's sixth entry comes Wednesday after Sabres practice.
PRAGUE -- We did the dress and drive to practice today. Dress at O2 Arena, get on the bus and drive to ICERINK about 25 minutes away for practice.
It was fun for one time, but I think if we had to do it too much it wouldn't be that great. It was hot on the bus and we had a good laugh. The guys had fun with it.
It brings me back to dressing and driving to the community rink. I didn't do it too often, but any time I was running late to practice it was normally because my dad was running late coming home from work. So I would put the gear on before he got home, be half-dressed, get to the rink and get dressed there pretty quick.
The good thing is nobody was close to missing the bus. Everybody was good today. All on time and accounted for.
We had an off day here Tuesday and I'm not the biggest tourist, but I spent a lot of time just walking around and seeing the different things here. I've been here already so I have an idea of the city, but I love walking around this city and really just doing nothing but looking.
The architecture is great, but what I also like is how clean it is. You don't see really any garbage lying around and there aren't as many cars as back home because everybody is walking around. It's pretty cool to see everyone walking instead of cars flying by.
We have one more practice before we start the season Friday (1 p.m. ET; NHLN, SN, MSGSN, MSG-B). We'll practice at O2 Arena on Thursday. It'll be our first time on the ice here in the game rink.
So we still have one more day to go, but definitely the practice before a game is literally just preparing for the game, so it's definitely getting real and I'm very excited to get this going.
We have spent a lot of time working on ourselves here. At the end of the day hockey is not a sport like football where teams are running plays and you have set things you have to work on. You've just go to know tendencies.
We worked a lot on the power play today, in fact. We've had a lot of high-energy, fast-paced practices working closely on our systems. So it's definitely been a lot of focusing on us as we prepare to get going. But I am assuming Thursday and certainly Friday will be more on them.
And then we play -- finally.
