Nashville forward Cody Glass, right, during his early days with the Vegas Golden Knights, where he played his first NHL game as a 20-year-old rookie.

-- Photo By Isaac Brekken | Ap

Cody Glass remembers it vividly. A long, very long even, perhaps awkward glance across the arena until the eye contact was returned and he felt he should look away. Looking back, for sure it was awkward. Really awkward.

No, this wasn’t the first time he saw his significant other. It was the first time he shared the ice with one of hockey’s greats.

Most hockey players have dreamed of playing in the NHL since they first strapped on skates or picked up a stick. Playing in their first NHL game, scoring their first goal or securing their first win as a goalie are all significant milestones, but when asked about what they felt was really their “Welcome to the NHL” moment, they all have unique memories of realizing that they were finally in the league.

As a 20-year-old rookie forward with the Vegas Golden Knights, Glass scored a goal in his first NHL game. As a highly touted prospect – he was drafted sixth overall by Vegas in 2017 – surely a player with his pedigree couldn’t get star-struck, right?

“I think the biggest moment was my first game against Sidney Crosby,” says Glass, who is now in his second year with the Predators. “I remember just lining up in warmups, I always do my stretching routine, and he was stretching on the other side of the rink. I remember I was just staring at him for like a good minute straight. And then he went and made eye contact with me, and I looked away. I was like, ‘Oh (darn), I shouldn’t be looking at him.’”

How did things go once the game started?

“I think he beat me on every single faceoff,” the affable Glass says. “I think that was just me being nice. That’s what I tell everybody, but he just worked me.”

No shame in that. Crosby works just about all his opponents, young and old.

Like Glass, Predators defenseman Luke Schenn looks back at who he faced as a surreal moment to begin his career, and his occurred in his first NHL game with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Until that point, he was working toward making his way onto NHL ice. But that night, he was wondering how quickly he could make his way off it.

“It was in Detroit 2008, and they were raising the Stanley Cup banner,” Schenn says. “I watched the whole ceremony on the bench and my first shift was against Chris Osgood in net and I think they had (Nicklas) Lidstrom, (Brian) Rafalski, (Pavel) Datsyuk, (Henrik) Zetterberg and (Tomas) Holmstrom were on the ice.

“I was 18 years old and I looked across and I thought, ‘How the hell can I get to the bench quick enough here?’”

As one of the top draft prospects earlier that year, Schenn was a guest at one of the Stanley Cup Final games in Detroit with famed former NHL coach and broadcaster Don Cherry. Just a few months later, he was playing against that team.

Now approaching 1,000 NHL games played, Schenn can look back and laugh. He can also take pride in reflecting on how early he was tested against such accomplished players.

“We actually won the game,” he says. “I have the game sheet at my house all framed that the Leafs did for me. I go back and I look and it’s guys with multiple Cup rings and Hall of Famers.”

Part of the excitement of playing in the NHL is doing so in the large arenas with rowdy crowds and the energy they bring. But for Nashville goaltender Kevin Lankinen, he had a very different experience.

“I think everybody will always remember their first game,” he says. “Mine was kind of weird because it was the COVID year, so we didn’t have any audience, but it was cool.”

Then a member of the Chicago Blackhawks, Lankinen couldn’t experience one of the more unique things that comes with playing a game in Chicago.

When soloist Jim Cornelison steps onto the United Center ice to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the Chicago crowd breaks out into raucous applause for the entirety of the song. Despite there being no crowd in Lankinen’s first game in Chicago, he was moved by the moment.

“Everybody who has been to the United Center knows that it is probably one of the loudest anthems and it has a story behind it,” says Lankinen, a Finn. “So even though we didn’t have the crowd, just being there on the ice, it’s something I’ll never forget.”

Unprompted, Lankinen then turned philosophical. After looking back on the start of his career, his thoughts immediately turned to looking to what’s ahead.

“Time flies so fast that sometimes you want to slow down a little bit and see kind of where you came from and then you realize how far you’ve come,” he says. “I always have the mindset that I didn’t come this far just to come this far. Always moving forward and hungry for more.”