Travis Green knows the New Jersey Devils well, having spent the 2023–24 season as their associate and later interim head coach.
With the Devils entering Monday night’s game against the Senators averaging 37.8 shots per game — tops in the league — he knows that Ottawa will need to “play on their toes” to limit their offensive firepower.
“We're going to have to check well. You know, we talk about winning a territorial game, sometimes the best way to defend against a team that has a lot of firepower is to play in their zone as much as you can, and that'll be an emphasis tonight,” said Green.
“A big part of it will just be playing our game and our checking game, [and focusing on] our details, our 200-foot game.”
“They’ve got a lot of really highly skilled players, and we know that they want offence, so we’ve got to manage the puck well, put it behind them, force them to play defence, and just can't turn pucks over,” said Dylan Cozens after morning skate.
The Sens are coming off two emotional wins over the Philadelphia Flyers and Nashville Predators on home ice — both backstopped by Linus Ullmark, who will start again on Monday night.
“It's always hard to win a game in the NHL, so to be able to kind of grind it out until the last minute, I think it just shows that we're getting to the point where we're mature,” said Jordan Spence.
“And we have to just keep grinding and keep working our way in order to score grindy goals at the end of the games, and those are important.”
Ullmark enters Monday sports a perfect 4-0-0 record, .942 save percentage, and 1.34 goals-against average (figures which all rank in the top five in their respective categories leaguewide).
“Yeah, he's been unreal. You know, that's the Linus we all know… he's playing great right now, and yeah, we definitely trust him back there. So [we’ve] just got to keep trying to do our job in front of him,” said Cozens.
