When the All-Star teams are announced, the NHL provides us with jerseys for each of our players selected, so that we can grab headshots to promote their selections to the game. With the announcement coming around 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, we needed to get a head shot of our All-Star that morning in South Florida. Armed with the knowledge that an Eric Staal All-Star jersey was being sent to the BankAtlantic Center so we could shoot Eric there, I approached him outside out hotel while we waited for the bus. The conversation went something like this:

Mike Sundheim

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Mike: Hey when we get over there today, I’ll need to grab you for just a minute. The league is sending an All-Star jersey down here so we can get a headshot of you before the announcement today.

Mike: Yeah I think you did the same thing with Kyle last year somewhere on the road. Florida will have a photographer there so we can grab a headshot and send it around.

From there, Eric drifted over to some fans standing next to the bus, and signed autographs for about five minutes. Then he came back to me.

Thus, Eric Staal found out he was going to his third consecutive All-Star Game. Of course, in traditional Staal fashion, his next series of questions were all about whether any of his teammates were going to Montreal with him. But the reigning All-Star MVP will be the lone Hurricane represented in Montreal in late January.

As for the jersey head shot, it actually never happened that morning in Florida. The jersey got stuck somewhere in Kentucky on its way down from Toronto, and arrived in Florida yesterday. The gold folks with the Panthers shipped it here to Boston, and we finally got the headshot done this morning prior to our game against Boston.

After tonight’s game against the Bruins, the Hurricanes will stay over in snowy Beantown before heading to Ottawa Sunday morning. We actually ran into the Senators on Friday morning in our hotel lobby, after Ottawa got stuck in Boston following their loss to the Bruins Thursday night.

Enjoy this afternoon’s game, which is televised on FS Carolinas.

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