Finally went to bed at 3am yesterday and once again got a strange wakeup call at 4.50am. I don’t know what the heck is going on with our phone in our room but it always rings at 4.50am. Weird.

So we got up at 8.30am and got ready to head up to Frisco for the boys’ training. We managed to get there relatively early - 10.50am. We dropped into the Stars Stuff Store (SSS) to exchange a t-shirt that we bought Sam that was faulty - unfortunately he couldn’t get one that was the same but he got another for the same player - Marty Turco. After we got the t-shirt, we went outside and in another door to the Executives Offices to meet up with Ian Suber, our ticket agent.

He was really lovely. We chatted for about twenty minutes and thanked him for selling us the tickets. He got our cell number and will call us when he’s arranged a time to take us and Tatjana down the tunnel to where the players walk out onto the ice so we can watch them walk by. That was really, really sweet of him to do that.

Then we went back into the SSS, and found Tatjana there who was trying to buy a jersey but unfortunately they were out of white away jerseys in L and XL replicas in all SSS. She was quite disappointed, as you would expect, and decided that she would get Robidas, the player she came to see play, to sign her Frankfurt jersey again.

The practice was amazing! Robi was the first one out on the ice to start hitting pucks around. The guys were in different coloured training jerseys, according to what line they were assigned. The first line - Jussi Jokinen (Left Wing), Mike Modano (Centre), Jere Lehtinen (Right Wing) were in white. The second line, Brenden Morrow (LW), Jason Arnott (C) and Stu Barnes (RW) were in red. The third line, Niklas Hagman (LW), Niko Kapanen (C) and Antti Miettinen (RW) were in grey and Fourth liners Steve Ott (LW), Jeremy Stevenson (LW), Nathan Perrott (RW) and Jaroslav Svoboda (LW) were in green. The defense guys, Trevor Daley, Jon Klemm, Sergei Zubov, Philippe Boucher, Willie Mitchell, Janne Niinimaa and Stephane Robidas were in black jerseys. Marty Turco and Johan Hedberg were both in net - one either end.

Coaching staff, Dave Tippett (Head Coach), Rick Wilson (Associate Coach), Mark Lamb (Assistant Coach) and Andy Moog (Goaltending Coach) were in Stars tracksuits out on the ice.

They did a lot of different drills and worked really hard for the whole hour. We got a heap of photos of the boys out on the ice and a couple of videos of them skating around doing drills and warming up. The D worked on sliding defense on the ice, the forwards on shooting and plays around the net. The whole team worked on puckhandling, and the power play unit worked longer than the rest of the team, trying out new plays and running them through until after the rest of the team had left the ice.

We met 14 players as they left the building - Jon Klemm, Johan Hedberg (who asked if we were the Australians that they saw on the jumbotron last night?), Marty Turco, Jussi Jokinen, Jason Arnott, Brenden Morrow, Jaroslav Svoboda, Steve Ott (who also asked about us being the Australians), Stephane Robidas (who we said we bumped into at the Mall and he remembered us), Antti Miettinen, Nathan Perrott, Philippe Boucher, Stu Barnes and Jere Lehtinen who we gave a jersey of the Bluetongues with his name and number to. Jere was humbled, surprised and I think a little embarrassed but really pleased to receive his gift. We also gave Jussi a koala and keyring, Marty a keyring and Jason Arnott a box of Arnott’s Tim Tams and explained that we call him “Tim Tam” because we think he’s the greatest and the Tim Tams are the PREMIUM biscuits in Australia - the Best! He said he’d seen them before and wondered what they tasted like. We said he could share them around or keep them - they were his. The guys were very appreciative of their gifts - at least to us anyway.

We didn’t get to see Mike or Zubie but we’ll catch up with them later. We got half the team in one go, so that’s a start.

When we got back to the hotel…AMBER WAS THERE!! We were so happy to see her again after five and a half years since we last got together for our wedding. She’s going to stay with us until Sunday and we hope to be able to sneak down to San Antonio sometime next week between games and meet her folks.

Tonight the three of us went to Denton to hang out with my mate Steve from the Stars forum. We ate Pizza and Buffalo Wings at the Pizza joint he’s the day manager for, and then played pool in a bar a street over. Now…we’re in his apartment and I’m borrowing his computer. He gave us a few presents… Sam was given an autographed Jere Lehtinen hockey stick from Jere’s rookie year, and I got an autographed Mike Modano puck in a frame with a rookie card. We gave Steve a Bodyjar CD, and a gift pack - platypus toy, shotglass, aussie keyring, a Tim Tam, a Caramello Koala and a Violet Crumble.

Tomorrow… we’re hoping to go off to the Zoo before game time! It’s half-price Wednesday at the Fort Worth Zoo! Stars Vs Wild at 7.30pm… but I want to get there around 6pm. The Stanley Cup is in the AAC tomorrow night and we want to get our photo taken with it!

~ Wendy

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Ok so further to the above, I wanted to just mention how awesome it was to meet Jere Lehtinen! Honestly, what an awesome guy. As Wendy posted above, we met the guys and had them sign our Jokinen jersey. Jere is my sports idol… fave person in all of sportsdom (is that a word?). It was so fantastic meeting him, and seeing his face when we gave him the jersey. I’ve liked Jere for a number of years now and meeting him was very much like a dream come true. I hope to meet him again before we head back home and get him to sign my Rookie card.

~ Sam