Benning_SJS

Matt Benning is writing a blog for NHL.com with the San Jose Sharks in Europe this week. The Sharks played an exhibition against Eisbaren Berlin at Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin on Tuesday as part of the 2022 NHL Global Series Challenge and opened the regular season Friday with the first of back-to-back games against the Nashville Predators in Prague as part of the 2022 NHL Global Series.
In his third installment Thursday, the defenseman wrote about getting a chance to see the city of Prague.

On Wednesday, a lot of the guys on the team got out into the city, did a lot of walking. I walked down toward the water, sat down and tried to enjoy the experience a little bit. We went to the square where the Prague Astronomical Clock is and at every hour, people gathered around and watched it. That was pretty cool just to see that. Stopped at a few coffee shops. Just tried to be tourists for the day.
Tommy Hertl
gave us some recommendations for guys who wanted to go shopping. I didn't, but I did go to a toy store for my kids, who are two and six weeks, got them some cool toys that we might not be able to get back home. They'll be excited about that.
A couple of us, including Luke Kunin, Matt Nieto and Timo Meier, jumped on those scooters to see as much as we could. You have to really have your head on a swivel, there's trains going everywhere, there's people driving. We weren't necessarily accustomed to the rules on the road, so we tried to stay onto the side roads, but we wanted to both save our legs but also get to enjoy some of the city, see as much as we could. I will say, going from the nice, paved roads to the cobblestones and the brick, it's sometimes challenging on a scooter. A little bumpy. But it's stuff you don't get to experience back home.
And then Tommy set up a really nice dinner for us, a cool building. It was three stories and we were at the bottom of what was an old bank. You could see the exposed cement, how thick it was. They told us they used to store all their gold down where we were. The food was great, we got to try a lot of different things I'd never tried before. A lot of meats, including a liver dish, with liver two different ways. It almost looked like pudding. I don't know what the word for it was, but I was excited to try that. It was good - it kind of tasted like cheese with a liver aftertaste. There was a really good brisket, good ribs, charcuterie boards with local jams.
They had a guy showing us how to pour a proper beer from the tap, the science behind letting a certain amount of gas in there, how to pour it properly. He was actually giving out certificates to guys -- if you went there and you did it properly, he'd give you a little pin and a legit certificate of how to pour a proper beer. So it was pretty fun for everybody, it was all interactive. I didn't try to get a certificate, but a bunch of guys did, Mario Ferraro, Kevin Labanc, Erik Karlsson, there were probably 10 or 12 guys that went up and did it. It was a fun experience and we got to enjoy it with some of the staff as well, which was pretty special.