World Series Blog: Mark Borowiecki

Mark Borowiecki writes a blog for NHL.com while the Nashville Predators are in Europe this week. They beat the San Jose Sharks 4-1 at the O2 Arena in Prague on Friday in the 2022 NHL World Series to open the regular season and will face them there again on Saturday (2 p.m. ET; NHLN, BSSO, NBCSCA ).

Today, in his fourth episode, the defenseman writes about his return to the regular season routine and his victory.

The visit is over. We resumed our regular season routine on Friday.

It’s quite regulated: breakfast at the hotel in the morning; bus to the ice rink; meetings; morning skate; do what you have to do; return by bus to the hotel; meal; up to your room with an extra hour to kill for the puck drop at 8 a.m. local time.

I’m 33 now, and I find that as I get older I don’t nap as much, so I slept about 20 minutes. Just kind of killed some time in my room. Read a little. I like to read. And yes, so let’s get back to it right away. Came to the rink for the game. It’s just awesome. We just have a great group. It was nice to be back in that routine.

I think we had a lot of energy in that first half. I think you saw at the start of the first one, we had a lot of jumps in our game. We played with a lot of rhythm. The penalties kind of killed the momentum a bit. I had a little trouble getting it back, but I thought about that stretch where we didn’t have a lot of momentum, that’s where our goalie, Juuse Saros, really stepped up for us. He made big saves and kept us where we needed to score. And then I thought our rhythm was kind of back.

After Eeli Tolvanen gave us a 2-1 lead at 1:24 of the second period, I dropped the gloves with the Sharks forward Jonas Gadjovich. The momentum wasn’t really our way until Tolvanen scored that big goal, and I thought maybe I’d try to build on that. I know Gadjovich is a player. I know he’s a really tough kid, throwing with both hands. So, I asked him to fight, and he was up for it, and that was it. It’s just nature when you’re a guy who plays like me.

There are some guys you know on this team who are probably going to play for that, and it’s a matter of picking the right spots. Yeah, I just got back in the saddle. They are not used to that in European hockey.

But in terms of the overall game, I thought my partner, Dante Fabbro, and I played well. We played a role. We killed some penalties. I thought our gaps were big. We also had some good offensive zone changes. So it felt really good to be back.

After the game, it’s just a matter of trying to relax. Bring a good meal back to the hotel and just try to calm me down and get as close to eight hours of sleep as possible. Tomorrow might be a little different. No morning skate. I could go for a walk. I could see my father again.

It’s been a good trip so far. Now is a chance to turn this into a great trip.

It sounds corny, but it’s true. You come back 2-0, you feel pretty good about yourself. I think from a team perspective, this trip has been very valuable for us. Guys say it all the time. You hit the road early in the season, it’s good for your group, and I think a special trip like this is even better. Now it’s about trying to get the job done.