Nick Blankenburg is writing a blog for NHL.com while the Columbus Blue Jackets are in Finland for the 2022 NHL Global Series this week. The Blue Jackets play the Colorado Avalanche in regular-season games at Nokia Arena in Tampere on Friday (2 pm ET; NHLN, SN, ALT, BSOH, SN NOW) and Saturday.
Today, in his third installment, the rookie defenseman writes about his off day in Helsinki and the open practice in Tampere on Thursday.
This has been a really fun trip so far, but it has gone by really quickly. We are already halfway through and the next couple of days, with the games, will go by a little quicker.
We have only been here for a bit. We took the train up from Helsinki before the open practice this afternoon. I think this is a pretty cool hockey city. It kind of reminds me of Columbus a little bit. You get off at the train station and there’s just one main street where everything kind of runs down. That’s kind of how Columbus is too.
The hotel is attached to the arena where we play, Nokia Arena. There is a casino attached to the hotel and me and some of the guys might hit that up after dinner. We will see what happens. We haven’t really decided what we’ll do.
[RELATED: 2022 NHL Global Series Finland coverage]
The hotel is really nice. I heard some of the guys saying that some of the rooms have saunas in them and you can watch the game from your room because the hotel is attached to the rink. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’d be probably one of the coolest things ever, to be able to watch a game from your hotel room in a sauna.
Speaking of the sauna, we got to go today. We got to sleep in a little bit and went to the sauna with a couple other guys and took a train here, then got here and came straight to the rink.
The sauna was great. I am a big ice bath guy and sauna guy. Back in Michigan, we would always go in the sauna and then we’d run to the ice bath and go in there for a minute, full-body, and then go back and forth. So that’s obviously what we did yesterday in the big sauna and then we would jump into the Baltic Sea. We jumped in there probably five times and kind of went back and forth.
I mean, I like saunas in general, and then to be able to jump in the ocean, it was amazing. I wish they had more saunas in the States. I think it’s an underrated thing that people don’t really realize how good it is for your health.
We had a practice today, an open practice, and that was great. I felt good out there and I think I am ready to go tomorrow for my first game back after getting injured. It’s awesome that it can be in a game like this.
The time change is still messing with me a little bit, I have to be honest. It’s weird, I went to bed last night and fell asleep around 9 pm and I woke up at 12:30. I was like, “Oh no, this isn’t good because I only got, like, three hours of sleep and I am wide awake.” I ended up checking my phone, which I shouldn’t have. I should have just tried going right back to bed. And then a buddy called me and he’s like, “What are you doing?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m in Finland.”
So for the rest of today, it’s all about the reset and getting to hang out with guys for the rest of the night, go to dinner.
I don’t think we are going to the wing place, Hook Restaurant, that Patrick Laine told us about. I went there when I was here for the (IIHF) World Championship last year. We are eating right near there, so maybe I will stop and get a few wings. Just a few.
It will be an early night. I will maybe read a little or watch a Netflix show and then go to bed.
Tomorrow will be exciting. Obviously Colorado is a good team and we’ve got something to prove, so it’ll be good to get out there and get going.
I can’t wait!
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