Merry Christmas!
Leading up to holidays I like to go around the Penguins' locker room and ask players a few different questions related to the day. For Halloween I asked players about their favorite candy, costumes and scary movies, and for Thanksgiving I asked about favorite Thanksgiving foods and what player were thankful for.
This week I asked a few players about their favorite Christmas movies, favorite gifts, and more!
Here's what they said.
FAVORITE CHRISTMAS MOVIE?
Drew O'Connor: It's got to be Elf, we watch it every year. I've seen it so many times. It's one of those movies that we had in our minivan days and it just got stuck in the rotation, we watched it hundreds of times.
Bryan Rust: It has to be Elf.
Brock McGinn: Elf!
P.O Joseph: The Harry Potters are my Christmas tradition. But other than that, Elf was a huge success in our family growing up.
Casey DeSmith: Home Alone
Danton Heinen: The Grinch.
Marcus Pettersson: It would be a Swedish classic movie, nobody would know what it is. But we always watch it around Christmas.
FAVORITE GIFT YOU'VE EVER RECEIVED?
Joseph: I think it was my first iPod touch, I was like 13 or 14 years old. I didn't have a phone, so my iPod was my big thing.
Pettersson: I asked my mom and dad for goalie gear for hockey. So when I got that I was pretty excited.
Rust: One of those Super Chexx bubble hockey machines. I can't remember how old I was when I got it, 15? But I still have it in my basement now.
O'Connor: An air hockey table. My parents had it set up in our basement. After we opened all of our gifts they said, 'Oh, we have one more' and we go down and they had it all set up. That was a good one.
DeSmith: When I was 10 I got the NHL 2001 computer game and I've never been so excited for a gift. Me and my buddy used to play it and he had it at his house, then I asked my parents for it and I got it at my house, so we would go home and play it at each other's houses every day. I installed it on the computer and played it like the whole day, from the time I got it until like, nine at night when I had to go to bed.
Heinen: As a kid I would always get hockey tickets, the Canucks. I have to go with that.
McGinn: A snowmobile, me and my brothers got a snowmobile when we were younger.
FAVORITE GIFT EVER GIVEN?
Rust: We'll see which one of the gifts my son likes the most this year, then we'll go with that one.
DeSmith: I wrote my mom a poem when I was like 14, and she loved it and cried. That was a nice gift.
Joseph: I don't usually give big gifts, I think I just give thoughtful gifts. I think I really liked the (charity) basket that we did this year with the team. I think it's fun that someone will have the ability to see and have whatever I like for the holidays.
Pettersson: It has to be something thoughtful, with a personal meeting, too. Since we've gotten older we usually play Secret Santa with my family, so we do some fun stuff like that.
IS THERE SANTA IN SWEDEN?
Pettersson: Yeah, we usually get to meet him too. It's not like here. So we celebrate on the 24th, right? I know here he's supposed to come on Christmas, like overnight. But we get to meet somebody who always dresses up as Santa and we get to meet him at night, usually on the 24th.
DO YOU REMEMBER HOW YOU FOUND OUT SANTA WASN'T REAL?
Pettersson: I can't remember when, but when there's always the same or a different voice (as Santa), and you get a little bit older you can hear whose voice it is, like if it's an uncle or whoever. It's a classic, classic thing that when the dad goes out to buy the newspaper in the evening, you know he's going to be Santa. So you kind of figure it out.
DeSmith: Oh, I was super young. We never really did the whole Santa thing. Like, my mom would put "From Santa," but it was my mom's writing. They would never "preach" Santa growing up.
McGinn: I'm sure my brothers let something slip and that's how I found out.
Heinen: Oh, I knew from a pretty young age.
Rust: I was probably like seven or eight, but I don't have any specific meltdowns or anything like that.
O'Connor: Oh, I'm sure it was someone at school. I'm sure I was devastated.
Joseph: From what I hear, I think Santa is still real. I still tell the kids that he exists and stuff like that. So for me he still exists, I just wanted to put that out there.
Past editions of Survey Says can be found here. Have an idea for a future question? Leave it in the comments!
