Sens will win only as a team: Anderson
The reality is the Ottawa Senators need to get their act together.
Coming off an ugly 5-0 loss to the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday, the Senators had Monday off before they returned to the ice Tuesday to face the Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday at the Honda Center.
The Senators have to figure what’s gone wrong, and quickly.
“We’ve got to buckle down as a group and as a team, and come together,” said goaltender Craig Anderson, who made 27 stops in relief of Mike Condon. “That’s the biggest thing right now, and that’s the biggest message we can share right now: It’s just not one guy on an island making mistakes, it’s everybody.
“Everybody has got to come together and figure it out as a group. The last thing we need right now is a bunch of individuals trying to figure it out on their own.”
The biggest concern for the Senators Sunday was the lack of “compete.” If that happens against the Ducks, or the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday at the Staples Center, it won’t be pretty.
“We’ve had compete. Even in the seven games that we lost, we had the compete level every game,” Ottawa head coach Guy Boucher said Sunday.
“This one (in Winnipeg), that wasn’t us.
“When you don’t have the compete level, you can draw whatever you want on the board. Your X’s and O’s don’t matter, your plan doesn’t matter, because without the compete level, there is no plan. … We know that’s a physical, tough team in (Anaheim), and we have to be much more ready than we were (Sunday).”
The task, Anderson said, isn’t impossible. He also pointed to Andrew (Hamburglar) Hammond’s incredible 20-1-2 run in 2014-15, which started on the West Coast.
“Hammy came in and ran the table for us,” Anderson said. “I’ve seen stranger things happen. At the end of the day, we came together as a group in those years, and that’s what we need to happen.”