Like Buddy the Elf, I just like to smile, smiling’s my favourite. But I haven’t been smiling much recently.

It’s pretty tough being the odd man out for Team Canada right now. The team brought in Ryan Ellis after the Predators were knocked out and he knocked me out of the line-up last game, a 4-0 loss to Finland.

It’s a double-edged sword. It’s a good experience to be here, but I want to be in the line-up and playing, making an impact. It is what it is. I have no hard feelings against Ellis or anyone else, I’m trying to keep myself positive and ready if the team needs me.

Watching from the press box will be extra hard these next games with championship hopes on the line, but I’m helping out where I can. We’ll face Team Sweden and some guy named Jacob Markstrom, who I ran into at the hotel today. He’s doing well and having fun; he’s a great guy, so we wished each other luck and may the best team win.

That being said, I’ve told my Canadian teammates to shoot five-hole on Marky, he hates getting scored on five-hole!!

I’m back smiling now, if you were wondering. After the coaches explained everything to me, the smile came back. And it was especially big today.

My dad Jim arrived this past weekend and with today being an off day, we went exploring. We saw a hover boat tour and just walked up to the boat and didn’t know anything about it or where it went, but we hopped on anyways. They were trying to tell us in Russian and we didn’t understand; I thought of the blog and wanting to have a good story to tell, so we sat down and gave it a go!

The photo at the top is our ‘oh man, this is nuts’ selfie we took when the tour began. The other photo is what we saw when the incredible tour took us to the Summer Palace of Peter the Great (and the other one is my dad being a goof!). There were gold fountains all over the place and it was amazing how big and rich and probably powerful Peter the Great was. This place was like if both the Sedins put their houses together!

It’s nice having my dad here. When Hockey Canada said we could bring one guest, I knew right away who it would be. My dad was pretty bummed out he couldn’t go on a father’s trip with the Canucks this year because it was a mother’s trip, so I asked him to come here. He got the time off work and he’s been having a lot of fun. He’s been a fan of the game since he was a little guy and now he gets to come meet all these players and everyone. He’s pretty pumped up about it all.

Every day someone comes up and says, ‘your dad, he’s fricken hilarious,’ and they have stories about him. He’s a real friendly, outgoing person, that’s where I get it from; I’ll go do my thing with the guys and let him roam free and next thing you know he’s made three new friends and they all love him. He’s having a grand time.

We have a meeting right now and it’ll help everyone shift gears to the quarterfinals. It’s all business now, especially after that wakeup call from Finland. At the end of the day that was a round robin game and our goal was to get to the quarterfinals and we did. In the end, I’m very confident with our team, obviously I wish I was playing, but it is what it is, and I think we’ve still got this in the bag.

Go Canada!

Ben