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“It’s definitely really exciting,” the soft-spoken speedster said following Friday’s practice. “If I get the opportunity, I want to make the best of it. It’s going to be something special if I do get to play. My whole family will be there.”

The cast will include Jim Formenton, mother Christine, brother Justin and perhaps a dozen more family members, all of them stunned at how quickly it happened.

“At 15, in his draft year in the OHL, he was 5-5 and maybe 140-145 pounds,” said Jim Formenton, who is best friends with Wendel Clark and works as a mechanic for Wendel Clark’s Meineke in Woodbridge, Ont. “He just kind of took off one year.”

Now 6-2 and 165 pounds, Alex Formenton never wanted to do anything other than play hockey, even scooting around the basement on roller blades as a three-year-old.

“I remember coming home from a weekend tournament after he played six games and I expected him to jump on the couch,” Jim Formenton said. “Instead, he jumped out of the car, put on his roller blades and started playing hockey on the driveway.

“I said, ‘Come on in, let’s do something else.. He told me that this is what he wanted to do. Well, I guess it kept him out of trouble.”

The 18-year-old will no doubt have butterflies leading up to his NHL debut, but events of the past week, including signing his first contract, making the opening-night roster and getting set for his regular-season debut Saturday, have also seemed unreal to his family.

“I haven’t slept well all week, but in a good way,” his father said. “How did this happen?”

kwarren@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/Citizenkwarren