Evan Bouchard

But, you know, you kind of got to take it to the grain of salt.

Now you've got a little more time to rest, recover, and get ready for a good one next year again.

Yeah, I mean, with Team Canada, it's always an honor when you get the ask.

And for me to have hockey over, like I said, early May is something that I'm not too familiar with.

So to get the call from them to go play, I feel like it was a no-brainer and get a few more games with Team Canada.

Yeah, exactly.

That definitely helps the decision for sure.

We honestly didn't talk about it much.

I got a message and I hopped on board and I think it was a day later she called me and asked what I was doing, what the plan was.

I let him know and I think he made the decision pretty quickly to go as well.

too much during the season.

You got a bigger picture team thing.

So yeah, I didn't think about it too much until it came out today.

It stings a little bit, but you know what?

You get back at it and you forget about it.

And like you said, there's a lot of great defensemen in the league, so it's kind of hard to pick between three of them.

Yeah, I think it's definitely a conscious effort.

And now it starts to come a little more naturally.

For me, I'm not going to go run around and be the big, heavy, hard defenseman to...

to usually play against.