The Senators have enjoyed home cooking for the past week, but the menu is about to change as the team heads out for their longest road trip of the season.
Before beginning the seven-game swing with a game in Anaheim on Thursday night, the Sens will take advantage of four days between games to reset.
“It’s important, there’s not a lot of practice time in stretches this year,” said Green, who said that the Sens will use Tuesday as a travel day and practice again Wednesday in Anaheim.
“We’ve had these two four-day breaks, so we’re kind of going with a little bit of the same look that we did before. But looking at our game, where we thought we needed some work, today there was a lot of puck touches, some scoring stuff, but also working on our defensive side of our puck as well. Trying to touch all of our areas but extra emphasis on certain parts.”
Claude Giroux says the lengthy trip is better served to happen at the beginning of the year and will bring the team closer, with lots of time for bonding. “More time together, really,” said Giroux. “This is a long one, obviously, and it’s going to be good for us to see where we stand on the road.”
The Sens will likely need to make use of both of their goaltenders on the trip, and both have rounded into form over the last few weeks.
“It’s a tight league this year, there’s not a lot of room for error. Goaltending’s at a premium in the NHL,” said Green, referencing the team’s seven overtime games so far this season, part of a league-wide trend that has seen almost 30 per cent of games go into extra time.
Linus Ullmark has picked up points for the Sens in eight of his last 10 starts dating back to an overtime loss against Edmonton on Oct. 21. Meanwhile, Leevi Meriläinen has won three straight starts dating back to Oct. 2 and holds a .913 save percentage and 2.33 goals-against average in those games.
“I think as far as our goalies have played, I think they’ve tightened things up in the last, I don’t know, 10-to-14 games, it feels that way,” said Green, adding that both are “trending in the right direction.”
As the goalies have rounded into form, so too has the team, even in the absence of Brady Tkachuk. David Perron said that missing their captain during the first quarter of the season has been hard, but not a topic in the dressing room. The Sens have compiled an 8-4-4 record since Tkachuk was injured in the third game of the season.
“It’s always like that on every team, you try to move on,” said Perron. “If we didn’t have success, we would probably hear about it more [from the media], we would talk about it more… we want to have him back because we know we’re a better team with him, [but] that’s just the reality right now.”
