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Always Good To Be Home

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 28, 2008

Tampa Bay Lightning forward Vinny Prospal will share a daily diary while the team is in Europe, including his native Czech Republic. The team will play a season-opening series in Prague against the New York Rangers on Oct. 4 and 5.

Saturday was a beautiful autumn day in Prague, and I looked forward to enjoying it with my teammates after practice. We had a long, but good session at the O2 Arena in the afternoon, watching video for more than an hour and then spending nearly 90 minutes on the ice together. In fact, Coach Barry Melrose had the ice cleaned in the middle of the skate because we roughed it up so much.

I think all the time together working on hockey was good, as we have just a week before the season opener and the roster is nearly set for the season. Time to start focusing on what we are going to do to win regular-season games and hopefully get us out to a good start next week.

After practice, I took a few teammates to the Charles Bridge, a famous old bridge in town that crosses the Vltava River. The river runs right through downtown and makes for some beautiful pictures and sightseeing. The most incredible of those sites is the famous Prague Castle, a huge complex which dates backs almost 1,500 years. It's just gorgeous. It is the Czech Republic's version of the White House, where our President, Vaclav Klaus, maintains his office. It's incredible to me that the building is still standing, let alone still serving as the headquarters of our country.

I don't want to go overboard on how beautiful our country is, but I really do think it is incredible, and most of our glorious older buildings look even better at night. The Prague Castle is no exception. As good as it looks during the day, it looks even better at night. You just have to see it. Somebody has done great, great work with the lighting there.

Today will be interesting for us, three countries in about 10 or 11 hours, starting with a flight from Prague to Berlin to play the Eisbarens before flying to Slovakia.

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