Senators take a few days off after Sweden trip
The Ottawa Senators headed home across the ocean Sunday from a pretty satisfying stay in Sweden.
They’d better get some rest, though. They’re going to need it after this trek.
After collecting all four points available in back-to-back wins Friday and Saturday over the Colorado Avalanche at Ericsson Globe, a big challenge awaits the Senators at home as they prepare to face the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins Thursday at Canadian Tire Centre.
While it took three days to get over the jet lag when they flew overseas Nov. 6, they’re not sure what to expect coming home. The club’s charter was scheduled to land at Macdonald-Cartier airport Sunday around 3 p.m. and the challenge for the players was to stay up late to try to get back on Eastern time.
This was a terrific effort for the Senators under somewhat difficult circumstances because of the six-hour time change, but now it’s back to reality.
The Senators will have plenty of time to rest before facing the Penguins. After eight hours on the plane Sunday, they’ll have Monday and Tuesday off before skating Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.
The Senators expect the adjustment to be difficult.
“The opponent is going to have an advantage in terms of rest and sleep,” said coach Guy Boucher following Saturday’s 4-3 win. “But you know what? We’ve had other challenges before and we’ve risen up to them and this is against Pittsburgh, so I don’t think we’ll need any motivation.”
Winger Mark Stone said it should be easier returning to Ottawa because the club had five days to prepare for this set with the Avalanche and the players will be in the comfort of their own homes.
“We’re going to have to try to stay up as late as we can and then try to get back on the time zone,” said Stone. “We’re used to travelling six or seven hours at a time through (North America), so for us it’s more the time zone we have to get used to.
“(Sunday) is an important day to really get adjusted to it.”
The last time the Senators saw the Penguins was May 25 when Chris Kunitz beat Craig Anderson for the winner in doubleOT in Game 7 of the East final. A lot has changed since then, but the Senators are on a mission to show their trip deep into the playoffs last spring was no accident.
While they’ve had a solid start, they’ve struggled with consistency defensively and they’ve had a difficult time holding leads. The Senators did a solid job Saturday by coming back on the strength of Johnny Oduya’s second goal of the season — this one in his hometown — to tie it up and Mike Hoffman’s winner with 6:37 left.
Stone, one of the club’s best players with 12 goals in 16 games this season, said the players need to bring the same kind of effort they had in Stockholm back to North America.
Ottawa outshot the Avs 40-18 Saturday and Anderson faced only eight shots in 29:24 of action after taking over from Mike Condon.
“As a whole, our offensive game is there,” said Stone. “We’re not losing games because of our offence, we’re losing games because of our defence.
“You look at the last two games (in Sweden) and I think we limited (Colorado) to 20 shots a game, which is where we want to be. I think if we can continue to do that as a team we’re going to win a lot of hockey games.”
The key now is to have some consistency. The Senators don’t have an easy stretch ahead of them. After a two-game homestand ends Nov. 18 against the Arizona Coyotes, the Senators will play one of their next 11 games at home.
The next three weeks will be pivotal in determining this club’s season. The key is they have plenty of confidence and are buoyed by general manager Pierre Dorion’s deal for centre Matt Duchene only hours before they left for Sweden.
Really, the Senators have no complaints about this trip and why should they?
As they made their way back to Ottawa Sunday the picture looked pretty good.