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The Hurricanes are in the bubble. The team arrived in Toronto last night and will have its first practice today.
Forwards Justin Williams and Jordan Martinook joined the media via Zoom Monday morning to discuss their first impressions.
Jordan Martinook
On safety and the bubble, and the news about Major League Baseball: I think you show up and you how they’ve created this little area for us. I talked to a major league baseball player and they’re going in and out of cities and stuff. Definitely the way we’re doing it is the safest, so hopefully we can keep it going in the right direction.
On having family photos in hotel rooms: I had mine in my room. I talked to my wife and I guess they reached out to your family to send a picture. So that’s nice. You’re coming into your home for the next three-four weeks here, however long we are here. It’s nice to have this little touch of home, but everybody has FaceTime and all that stuff, so you can still keep in contact pretty good.
On the unprecedented nature of this postseason: I think just even being around the guys here, last night, this morning I had a coffee out on the patio thing for us. Just talking about how we’re the only people that have been a part of this. Obviously we miss our families, we miss a lot of things, but it is unprecedented, it’s kind of a cool circumstance that your team is your family for the foreseeable future. Obviously we’re a family throughout the year, but you’re definitely going to be a lot tighter after this. It’s obviously not ideal, you want to be at home with your families, but it is kind of a cool experience. Obviously it’s going to be a hard one to win. Everybody’s kind of on a level playing ground, so I think we’re excited for the challenge.”
Justin Williams
On excitement being in the bubble: I think right around a week and a half, we kind of got in the dressing room and said ‘Alright, when are we going to play a game.’ It’s nice to be moving on and coming here, getting the lay of the land. It’s kind of attributed to when you go on vacation or you come to a hotel and you just see the lay of the land, just check it out and see what we’re going to be dealing with. That’s what we’re doing now. We’re going to get on the ice today and for us, that’s normalcy, so we’re looking forward to it.
On the exhibition game: I think the most important thing, I think, as players that we’re going to take out of it is we haven’t really done much contact. Yes, we’re playing hard against each other but it’s a huge difference when you get hit. So I’m going to throw a few hits that probably aren’t going to hurt anybody. I’m going to take some hits as well. I don’t think we’re going to be diving in front of Ovechkin’s shot to block it, but we’re going to be out there playing hard and getting ourselves as close to ready as we can get. One exhibition is maybe maybe 10-17 minutes for every guy out there. So We’re going to do what we can, but I think getting hit will be the biggest thing guys are going to have to get used to again.
On if you interact with other teams: We’re pretty fresh being here. We’ve seen other players. Other teams’ lounges are relatively close, but there’s not much interaction. You can’t really interact with someone when you can’t really see their face, you look down and you can’t really see who it is. You’re like ‘Who’s that? I don’t know.’ We’ve got these masks on, so it’s tough to tell. I’m sure we’ll bump into guys and give a head nod, but that’s it. It’s just us; we’re just the Hurricanes. We’re going to keep to ourselves.