COLUMBUS, Ohio – Florida defenseman Aaron Ekblad sat on the Team Toews bench at the 2015 NHL All-Star Game and started to get a little nervous. There was such anxiousness in the 18-year-old’s body that he started to shimmy a little.
“I was sitting on the bench getting the shakes a little bit. I was trying not to try too hard,” he said. “That’s kind of like the thing to do almost. It is hard to do. I got chirped a little bit for trying too hard.”
An All-Star Game for a first year player is tough. You want to play at your regular season pace. You want to look good in front of your boyhood heroes. You don’t want to embarrass yourself. But really, it’s just a glorified exhibition.
“That was like summertime hockey,” Ekblad later said.
With several players pulling out at the last minute before the mid-winter classic/sponsor-fest, there were few replacements close and available. So the league had to add its pool of rookies it originally designated for the Saturday skills competition.
Ekblad, Nashville's Filip Forsberg and Calgary's Johnny Gaudreau all found their way into the big game Sunday and all found out about it during the weekend. This led to some interesting emotional drama for the youngsters and some travel rearrangements.
“I heard some rumors I was playing at first and I got kind of a little bit excited. I heard I wasn’t playing, which wasn’t very fun,” Gaudreau said. “Then I got a chance to play and I was extremely excited about it.”
Ekblad led the way with four assists. Forsberg notched two goals and ‘Johnny Hockey’ notched two assists. Interestingly, Gaudreau and Forsberg played on a line with one another.
“You just have to try to make plays when they’re there,” Forsberg said. “Just try to have some fun out there and I think everyone did a pretty good job at that.”
At points, the two rookie forwards were lined up with crafty veteran Patrik Elias, the oldest player in the game at age 38. And Elias didn’t need to calm down the youngsters. In fact they brought him up to speed when he notched an assist on Forsberg’s first goal.
“I think they fit in fine. I think we had a really good group of guy here and made it easier for them to be around us,” Elias said. “Their skills, their hands. You can see the game they play, the vision. It was pretty impressive.”
But all in all they were still rookies and still got the young guy treatment. When it was brought up to Florida's Roberto Luongo that Ekblad had four assists, he gently ribbed his Panthers teammate.
"Did he? But how many was he on the ice for against?" Luongo said.
Ekblad was a minus-2 in a game with no penalties, Bobby Lu.
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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper
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