Official Site of Darcy Hordichuk

This is my first trip here to Whistler but what a beautiful place. To have training camp up here is pretty exciting. Unfortunately we’re only here for a couple of days so we haven’t had the chance to go around very much. This is definitely a place where I’d like to come back to in the future and I can only imagine how beautiful it is in the winter.

We’ve got out and done a little bit of exploring, but it’s tough with the practices and everything is so intense and at this point that pretty much everyone just wants to get back to the hotel to rest and get focused for the next day focus. Especially for a new guy like me – I’ve got a lot to prove here.

My roommate is Bernier. He’s a guy I used to run every time I played against San Jose. Now we’re roommates. He’s a good kid, down to earth. That’s what you look for in a teammate.

I guess he’s not too upset about the past year or two. We’re actually getting along great. We’ve got our routine working: get up, get breakfasts together, hit the bus and off to the rink.

We found the hot tub the first day and we’ve been hanging out there after practice. It’s been a good couple of days but too bad it’s ending.

There’s been one hitch though: Bern says said that I’ve been snoring but I don’t believe it. I’m not a snorer. Maybe he’s hearing something through the walls or maybe he’s trying to squeeze a little guilt out of me. I’m not biting,

Mostly we’re on the same page though – shutting it down at the same time, and watching the same TV. Sometimes though, he likes to do little things and I have to just rough him up just to put him in place. I have to let him know, right?!?! Intimidation’s the key with roommates, I think. No, seriously, I think he’s great and hopefully I can get someone who I can get along with like that for the rest of the year.

I feel bad because his English is actually really good but my French on the other hand… I took it for nine years in school and sometimes I can pick up the odd French word but I’m still struggling with that. If you don’t use it, you just tend to lose it. And I’ve lost it.

There’s one upside to a short camp like this – it’s intense and it’s easy to get into it right away. The last couple of days have been pretty up-tempo. I’m impressed by how fast it is and how great the passes are. Everybody seems to be ready and they know it was only a couple of days.

The other things is I like the fact that you don’t have to run your own teammates and you don’t have to fight your own guys on the team. That’s not good for anyone. With camp being so quick, we can focus on pre-season and take it out on some of the other teams. You always hate to see guys get hurt, especially on your team, so I’m glad about the way they’re doing it this year.

I’m not playing tomorrow night in Edmonton, so I’ll have to wait another day or two, but I’m excited to play again.