January 6, 2014 3:38 pm

In all honesty, we don’t know much about Washington Capitals 2013 first round pick Andre Burakovsky. While Evgeny Kuznetsov is an open-yet-confusing book, all we know about Burakovsky is that his dad used to play in the NHL and the dude really, really likes macaroni and cheese and cinnamon rollers.

But everything changed last week when we saw a special feature on Burakovsky filmed by SVT — better known as Sveriges Television. The angle of the feature focused on Burakovsky’s reunion with his best friend in the whole wide world, Nick Sörensen, and playing on the same line together at the World Junior Championships.

We learned that Burakovsky is a playful and inquisitive guy. And that he’s a huge hugger. Like zero respect of personal space with this guy.

Friend-of-the-blog Jake Ware was nice enough to translate the entire dialogue of the video. It’s adorable.

Reporter: If I say André Burakovsky, what do you think about?
Jacob De La Rose: Kindergarten.
Alexander Wennberg: I think about lots of questions. You quite often have to explain things to him, like recently, when I had to sew some stitches, he comes to me and asks why I don’t sew faster.
Oscar Dansk: He was wondering how you put on one of those facemasks, I think.
Nick Sörensen: Number one on his list is that he comes up with things that nobody understands.
Erik Karlsson: He’s pretty playful like that.
De La Rose: There are twenty kindergarten teachers out there and one child.

André Burakovsky: I’ve always been the guy that kind of stands out. I’m not one to be shy and hide in a corner and not talk very much, I like to talk and I don’t know, it seems like the guys on the team really like it. I’m just myself.

Reporter: He is a character that makes you laugh; just ask Nick Sörensen, his best friend, who knows him better than anyone.

Nick Sörensen: When we were younger, he always wanted to play goalie when we played floorball. And every night we would be out playing and it always ended with André stopping the game and going into his house and crying.
Reporter: Why?
Sörensen: Because everyone else cheated because we scored.
Burakovsky: I was always goalie and he always played out and always wanted to take penalty shots, and if I’m honest I was too good at goalie and he could never score so it’s the opposite of what he says.
Sörensen: Two weeks ago he said monkeys eat 20,000 bananas a day. Because they peel from the bottom, it goes much quicker, he said.

Reporter: Do you stand by the fact that monkeys eat 20,000 bananas a day?
Burakovsky: I don’t know if I stand by it but we had a discussion in the team about how to actually open a banana. From which end. Humans always open where the stem is but I saw on Discovery Channel that monkeys open it from the other side, so I was just pointing out that monkeys obviously know better how to open a banana since they eat about 20,000 of them, which they of course don’t, but still a lot more than us.

Reporter: Off the ice, he’s the same funny guy that he’s always been. On the ice, his earlier more cubbish side has undergone a real transformation. On the ice, he has matured enormously since he left Malmö.
Burakovsky: It’s a completely different game over there. The rink is smaller, it’s quicker, more physical play, and whereas here there’s a lot of play in the corners before coming in at goal, over there you just go straight at goal all the time. There’s no turning just full speed attack. I’ve had to develop and be quicker.

Reporter: Together with linemate Nick Sörensen and the skilled Lucas Wallmark, the trio has formed a feared third-line. The depth of this team is noticeable.
Nick Sörensen: He’s a wonderful person, my best friend. He always has been. It’s wonderful to get to play on the same team and even same line as him. We’ve played together for a long time, since we were little. And then Wallmark is really good, very skilled with the puck. It was a long time since we played together and it’s a whole different level now, but it’s clicking more and more and Wallmark has come in as the perfect link in down the middle, dishing out pucks and doing his job so it’s worked better and better I think.

Andre Burakovsky: We’ve been apart for a while now so at the beginning we maybe weren’t finding each other so well but now the chemistry is really coming back and we know exactly where the other is so it feels good.