On the Wings

Below is the second of three parts of my interview with Kris Draper:

Question #5: Think back to your high school years, what was your favorite activity to do outside of school like on the weekends?
�Well, luckily I was in a lot of sports and I think that was my parents� idea to keep me out of trouble. But I mean like any teenager, I loved going out with my friends. You�d do whatever you�d do and obviously sometimes you�d find trouble and other times you�d stay out of trouble. I always enjoyed going to the movies and that kind of stuff. But I would have hockey on the weekends with usually a Friday night or Saturday night game and practices as well so that was probably the busiest time for me. And that�s what I loved and that�s what I wanted. I wanted to be surrounded by hockey and I was able to do that by playing high school hockey and then also by playing in a different league as well. Everything was busy with hockey.�

Question #6: Did you do any other sports in high school or was it just hockey?
�Yeah, I started out playing football but the seasons overlapped so my schoolwork suffered. I was alright with it but my dad wasn�t. Obviously, it was a no brainer at what sport I was going to pick. Yeah I enjoyed playing football but hockey was something I wanted to do at any opportunity that I had. But then during the summer time, I played golf and tennis and those kind of activities but mostly especially during the winter it was hockey.�

Question #7: Who is your roommate?
�I room with Darren McCarty.�
I bet there are some pretty interesting stories there.
�Yeah, we had some good times.�
Any one story you�d like to share?
�Let�s see, well the funny thing is you always get in the room (hotel room) and its always who gets what bed. With Darren and I, if we�re winning then he�ll have the bed closest to when you walk in the room and I�ll have the window bed. And if we lose, we�ll switch it up. We�ll always argue for the remote. Darren�s the kind of guy who has a lot of stuff going on. He�ll be on his computer, talking on his cell phone, and he still thinks he can watch whatever program on TV that he wants. While I�m just sitting there and I�m like pass me the remote. So we kind of have little arguments like that. The time factor like when you want to go to sleep; he�s the kind of guy who can watch TV all night and not have a problem. Whereas I like sleep, I enjoy sleep time and I�ll get up at 4 or 5 in the morning and sure enough the TV will still be on and I�ll try to look for the remote and the remote would be somewhere in Darren�s bed and I really wouldn�t want to go look for it at 4 or 5 in the morning. But usually on the road, you�ll get 10-14 guys going out for dinner and then after that some of the guys will go to the movies so it�s a good time to hang out with your teammates. Its not fun being away from home but everyone does things together which makes it more fun.�

I went to the game last night and Draper was giving Federov a hard time on the boards, but otherwise Feds just seemed to float around the neutral zone- no serious contributions. And Vitaly Vishnevski of the Mighty Ducks nailed Yzerman in the first part of the game and Yzie slammed his stick on the bench because there was no call; Shanny gave #5 a rough time the rest of the game. Tomorrow I’ll post the final part of the Draper interview about his pregame routine and nicknames/team fun.