Sens try to go stats- blind ahead of hosting last- place Arizona
The way Mark Stone sees it, the Ottawa Senators have to become stats- blind in preparing for the struggling Arizona Coyotes Saturday afternoon.
“It shouldn’t happen, but I do think it does creep in there sometimes,” Stone said of teams having a tendency to take bottom- rung teams lightly.
“In our locker room, I don’t think it does. Right now, the teams that we know we have to beat, we have been able to beat and ( Saturday) is no different.”
Even after defeating the Montreal Canadiens 5- 4 on Thursday — the Coyotes first regulation win of the season — Arizona comes into the Canadian Tire Centre with a record of 3- 15- 3, already 14 points behind the expansion Vegas Golden Knights and 11 points out of a playoff spot. The win over the Canadiens ended a fivegame losing streak and the Coyotes have allowed a league- high 83 goals against.
Picking up from where Stone left off, Senators coach Guy Boucher says his squad has to become colourblind.
“I don’t care what colour their jersey is,” said Boucher. “If it’s blue, yellow, black, green, I don’t care. It’s about ourselves. We’re not even looking right now at the opponent. We’re looking at keeping our game for 60 minutes.”
Ottawa’s first 17 games have been coloured by inconsistency and they enter Saturday’s game on a low. After a decent start against the Pittsburgh Penguins Thursday, they lost their attention to detail, allowing the Penguins to take the game away en route to a 3- 1 defeat.
“Terrific first period, it could have been 2- 0 or 3- 0 for us at that point,” Boucher said of the loss to the Penguins. “But we didn’t sustain that and one big reason was we definitely over- extended our shifts. They did not. We stopped doing what we did in the first period. Our work ethic diminished and our discipline diminished as the game went on.”
Boucher was harping on those messages over and over again at practice Friday. There were changes on the forward lines, with Tom Pyatt and Mike Hoffman flipping spots. Pyatt skated on a line with Stone and Derick Brassard, while Hoffman was on a unit with Jean- Gabriel Pageau and Chris DiDomenico.
Now with a 4- 4- 4 record at home, the game against Arizona has become as pivotal as any mid- November contest can be.
After the game, the Senators will fly immediately to New York for Sunday’s game against the Rangers, which kicks off a stretch where the club plays 10 of 11 games on the road.
Motivation shouldn’t be an issue. Brassard says there should also be no room for disrespecting any opponent in the NHL, suggesting the Coyotes are far better than their record would indicate.
“They’re a young, talented team and they added a few veteran guys,” said Brassard. “I wouldn’t say they’re fragile. They’re young and when you’re young, you have a lot of energy and you have a lot of skills. We’re not taking any team for granted in this league.