The Senators practice on Thursday at Bell Sensplex had a few new faces. The Senators recalled Carter Yakemchuk, Arthur Kaliyev, Tyler Boucher, and Oskar Pettersson from Belleville to have a full group of skaters to run practice, which lasted just over an hour and featured many scrimmage-type drills.
“It was great, good day, hard day for our group, but it was a real good practice,” said Travis Green afterwards. “Thought the guys really worked their tails off and bought into what we’re trying to do.”
“I think the past few days we’re just trying to get our legs going again, get back to game intensity, especially today was a hard one, but we needed that as well,” said Jordan Spence.
“I think [the call-ups] makes it way easier, the past two days we only had, what, nine forwards and five [defence], when we’re doing the reps it’s a lot harder. But obviously the guys coming in today made it a little easier, but at the same time, we’re trying to keep it fast paced, so it’s hard regardless.”
Of the four call-ups, just Kaliyev (two) has played NHL games this season, which made the practice an opportunity for the AHLers to measure themselves against the big squad. It also served as an opportunity for the coaching staff and management to keep some close tabs on players that could serve as call-ups later in the year.
“Haven’t seen a guy like Pettersson or Boucher, obviously we know Kaliyev, he’s having a good year down there,” said Green.
“There’s a lot of talk about guys that are having success. ‘Yak’, there’s always lots of talk about him. Guys like Pettersson and Boucher, no one talks about them outside of our room, but we just want to get some eyes on them, and those are obviously a couple of guys that we think in a certain spot we can call up, and it was good to see them.”
“Yeah, it was pretty cool,” said Yakemchuk. “Obviously it was a long practice, it was pretty hard, but it was pretty cool… I think all four of us were pretty excited to come and get a skate in.”
With a week still remaining until the Senators play again, Thursday served as a major ramp-up in terms of intensity. “All the drills we’re doing right now is kind of the drills that we we did in training camp,” said Spence.
“So I guess it’s like the same thing, coming into camp, getting ready for a game. We’ve got to get our game legs back again, our intensity, our physicality, all that stuff, so I think it’s good to kind of get these three practices into that momentum, and hopefully we can carry on with the practices coming along.”
