Winter Classic blog: Boo Nieves

The Buffalo Sabres and New York Rangers took it outside to play in the 2018 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic at Citi Field on Monday. Rangers forward Boo Nieves, who played three outdoor games for the University of Michigan, agreed to be a guest blogger for NHL.com to write about his Winter Classic experience.
Here is Nieves' final entry, after New York's 3-2 overtime win:

NEW YORK -- It kind of hit me when we came out for the introductions.
The band was playing. The fire was shooting up in the air. The fireworks were going off. It hit me how big this was, how huge, and I kind of felt like a little kid again with the only difference being that I had my skates and gloves this time and I was part of the show.
The introductions, coming out for those, it was spine-tingling. I just had chills. I took one time to just look all the way around. I didn't see an empty seat. I literally had chills running down my back, and not because it was 20 degrees out.
Related: [Miller overtime goal lifts Rangers past Sabres in Winter Classic | All 2018 Bridgestone Winter Classic coverage]
When I got on the ice and started skating around, it really brought me back to being on the pond or the backyard rink, remembering when I was pretending that there were intros like that for me, the crowd roaring, the big game about to begin. That's exactly what it was like.
Who could have ever imagined the dream would come true? It did.
Then, our first shift, we score. I mean, seriously? Are you kidding me? Just wow.

We went out on the ice thinking we had to keep it simple. The elements don't allow you to be all that fancy with the puck and, frankly, we're not a line that is supposed to be fancy. We play hard. We forecheck. We grind. And that's how we get our chances.
That's how we got this goal.
We got the puck in deep. We won a couple battles. I saw Jesper Fast, who had just come back in the lineup. I gave it to him and he found Paul Carey right by the hash marks. Paul has been great from that spot. It's his fifth goal.
He scored and it hit me, like, "Oh my God, we're doing this. This is it."
It did take a second for me to hear the crowd, though. That's because they're not on top of you like they are in an indoor game. I heard his shot hit the net, then silence, and then everybody just started going nuts.
You expect to play well and have fun, but scoring on our first shift to really lift our spirts, it was awesome.
The Sabres came back on us to tie it 2-2, but our spirits are always high. We've been in close games and we've prevailed more than we haven't. We kept each other encouraged, kept our spirits high, and everybody contributed until J.T. Miller did a great job to find the open net.

I saw him literally running toward the boards before I knew anything. Then I saw everybody start flying off the bench and I'm like, "I think we just scored!" Then we all went over and celebrated with him and that is, honestly, just something I will never, ever forget.
When your team wins in overtime in any regular game, it's impactful, it means a lot, and it's great, but this was just a whole other level of amazing. This was a whole other stage. There were 40,000-plus people here. It was just awesome to hear the 'Let's go Rangers' chants just echoing throughout the stadium.
What a day. What an experience. What a win.