Sens need pre-Christmas push
OTTAWA — This has been a very long month for Ottawa’s hockey heroes. They will have played 12 games between Dec. 1 and 22, with seven on the road.
Fortunately, there has been just one back-to-back in December (Dec. 5-6), and the Senators caught the San Jose Sharks on Friday coming off an overtime win Thursday in Toronto.
After cancelling a scheduled skate, head coach Dave Cameron admitted his team has several players “banged up” — and not just forward Curtis Lazar, shaken up on a marginal Tom Wilson hit Wednesday in Washington.
In fact, the trend recently has been toward optional skates and short practices when the club is playing every other day. The Senators could use the lighter day ahead of their last home game prior to Christmas.
In what seems the blink of an eye, the Senators have fallen from second in the Atlantic to a wild card position, just ahead of Tampa Bay and Florida.
It has been said and written before, small losing streaks or winning streaks can vault teams two or three places in the standings in either direction.
“How many times at the end of the year do you see teams miss the playoffs by one or two points,” said Senators defenceman Mark Borowiecki. “That could be a game you let slip away, a game you didn’t bring your best effort or weren’t prepared for. So it’s important for us to get them where we can.”
Defenceman Marc Methot assured one and all that there won’t be any pre-Christmas distraction.
“Everyone looks forward to Christmas. And those three days off. Everyone plays with small injuries and bumps and bruises, so when you have a couple of days consecutively that you can just heal up a little bit, even the mind, relax a little. It’s always nice. But ... i f we can finish off these last couple of games before the break on a good note, that will be a lot more enjoyable for us.”
“You want to go into the break with momentum, you don’t want to go into it losing a lot of games because then the mood’s not really great. If we can go in with more wins than l osses, that’s something we’re looking forward to doing.”
From a press box view, the Senators didn’t quite have the jam they did against the Los Angeles Kings on Monday, when Ottawa delivered an important 5-3 win.
Lazar concurs his team wasn’t as energetic.
“But that’s going to happen,” says Lazar. “It’s a long season, and every night, you’re not going to have your legs. That’s where communication comes into play.”
Most nights, the Senators do a good job of sticking with their “system,” Lazar notes, regardless of the score or the opponent.
When the opponent is the Capitals, though, this is more easily said than done. Cameron believes the play of the conference-leading Caps helped make the Senators look sluggish.
“We had a decent start ... but when you get hemmed in your own end for a period of time, like we did there, and you don’t sort out the D- zone coverage, you kind of lose some of your raw edge or momentum,” Cameron says.
“When you’re chasing the puck in your own end, you seem to tire a lot quicker.”
As to the daily taffy pull that has been the divisional and conference standings so far, Cameron doesn’t think it’s a temporary phenomenon.
“I don’t expect us to lose three out of four, but I expect our team to really be in a grind this year to be in the playoffs,” Cameron says. “We’re in that group of teams that have to find a way to do it. And there’s no easy games. You win three games, you get a bit of room. But it’s tight now and it’s going to stay tight all the way through.”