So, you were born and raised in Arizona \u2013 how did you first get into hockey?<\/p>\n
My dad grew up in upstate New York, so he played growing up. And then my older brother also played. As the younger brother, you kind of want to be just like your older brother. I think I was in a hockey rink when I was less than a month old.<\/p>\n
Who have been your biggest influences to help you get to this point?<\/p>\n
Obviously, my family. Getting to this point, I wouldn\u2019t be here without them. My brother (Johnny Walker), just watching him growing up, being able to watch him play college hockey (at Arizona State University). All my coaches. Just so many people that you think of. It\u2019s hard to name them all.<\/p>\n
Apart from Sid, who else did you watch growing up?<\/p>\n
I watched a lot of (Kris) Letang as well, because I was always watching the Penguins. More recently, it\u2019s been Quinn Hughes, Cale Makar, guys like that. But yeah, growing up, it was a lot of the Penguins and Letang.<\/p>\n
Just how surreal has it been joining the Penguins, and even watching this game [Pittsburgh at Washington]?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unreal. I texted my brother earlier today, I\u2019m watching history right now. This is what, their 100th game playing against each other? You always hear about the battles growing up. It\u2019s just awesome to watch.<\/p>\n
How would you describe your game for fans that are going to be seeing you for the first time?<\/p>\n
Probably a more offensive defenseman, but I also like to compete in the D-zone, use my skating and hockey IQ to my advantage.<\/p>\n
If you weren’t on this path now, what do you think you might have interest in career-wise?<\/p>\n
Golf or baseball. Baseball is huge in Arizona, so I played growing up.<\/p>\n
Are the Diamondbacks your team?<\/p>\n
The San Francisco Giants, actually. My aunt and uncle are from Santa Cruz, California, so I would always go out there and visit. That was the team.<\/p>\n
Finally, what is a fun fact about yourself?<\/p>\n
Probably that I\u2019m a black belt. There was a little karate studio in the rink in Arizona. I was just watching them one day, and took it up. Just continued it. I don\u2019t remember how old I was, I was pretty young. I was probably 12 or 13 when I got my black belt. Once hockey started getting more serious and I started traveling, I couldn\u2019t really do it anymore. I remember I was asking my trainer if I could just go fight in the ring as quick as possible, I didn\u2019t know you had to train for it the entire time. Once I figured that out, I was like yeah, I\u2019ll do it. [MC: Have you ever been in a fight on the ice?] Yeah, I had a few in juniors. One was fine, the other one was a little scuffle, and one I got my butt kicked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So, you were born and raised in Arizona \u2013 how did you first get into hockey? My dad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-584469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}