After a 4-1 loss on home ice that Travis Green called maybe the worst of the season for the Senators, David Perron cleared his mind by flooding his backyard rink.
“I got home, all the slush on it, I was like, ‘No, I’m not doing that, going to bed,’” Perron told the media on Tuesday after team meetings. But with his four children home from school for the holiday break — and his oldest playing in the Bell Capital Cup — the 37-year-old put in a late-night ice maintenance shift.
“The two days in between games allowed me to stay up an extra hour and go out there. In a way, cleared my mind doing it. Typical Canadian way to spend a winter, but I enjoyed it. And yeah, I get home, it allows me to move past things a little quicker. It is what it is.”
Every player on the Senators has a different way of moving past a game like that. That’s imperative in an 82-game season. But the shared belief among the team after Monday’s loss to Columbus was that their performance just simply didn’t cut it.
“Last game, was to be honest, pretty unacceptable,” said Tim Stützle on Tuesday, who extended his season-long point streak to 10 games with an assist on Jake Sanderson’s second-period goal.
“Didn’t play to our identity and didn’t play hard enough. Didn’t work hard enough, I guess, and when we’re excited to play, I think that’s when we play our best hockey. I hope it was just a one-off and we can go back at it.”
Green said after the game on Monday night that he didn’t need to yell at his team to deliver the message about their performance. On Tuesday, he brought up specifics while conducting meetings with the team.
Green said that above all else, the team “looked slow,” and that skating affects every part of a team’s game. “We just were not good last night. We didn’t have a lot of good players,” added the coach.
“We talked about our game, much like we always do. I think it’s important that we met today after playing a game like we did last night,” said Green.
“It’s been a little uncharacteristic of us to have a really bad game. I think it was important to get the stink off our game, talk about it, be honest about it, and move forward, onto the next one.”
The next one, of course, another home game, this one a New Year’s Day matinee against the Washington Capitals. “We all want to win, I think that’s never going to be a question,” said Stützle.
“I think it’s just we have to play harder. We’ve got to finish more hits, we’ve got to go through guys, and yeah, everybody’s got to do the same thing. As a team, we’ve got to find a way to bounce back and we want to do that next game."
The Senators will practice Wednesday. "How do we get back to our game? That starts with a good practice tomorrow," said Green. "Not looking back. Looking ahead, and being excited to play."
