Travis Green didn’t know about — or want to hear about — the historical struggles in the month of November for the Ottawa Senators when asked about them last week before the Sens embarked on a run of six games in 10 days.
“Allergies?” he joked when asked what was harder about playing in the month of November.
“I’m not worried about any time before I got here,” said Green, in the midst of his second season behind the bench in Ottawa. “I’m worried about today, I’m worried about tomorrow. I’m not trying to analyze things that have happened over the last seven or eight years.”
This November, the Sens are undefeated in regulation (3-0-3) heading into the final game of a four-game homestand on Saturday night when the Los Angeles Kings make their lone visit of the season.
In their past 12 games, the Sens have lost just once in regulation.
Making the recent run more impressive is that the Sens have done it without Brady Tkachuk, and more recently, Thomas Chabot, who was injured and left Tuesday’s overtime loss against Dallas.
After a run where the Sens were often playing from behind — they allowed the first goal of the game nine times in their first 10 games — they’ve turned that ship around.
Since an overtime loss to Boston on Nov. 6, the Sens have been tied with their opponent or played with the lead for 259:25 of game time and have opened the scoring in four straight games heading into Saturday.
“Yeah, not a lot of difference in our game,” said Green about how that changes how the team plays.
“I don’t know, it was probably three weeks ago in here I got questioned why we weren’t scoring first. You don’t plan on not scoring first, you hope you score first, and you hope you keep the lead. But we talk a lot about just playing our game for 60 minutes and good things will happen. Whether you’re up or you’re down, we don’t really want to change our game.”
The Sens have drawn upon all able bodies during the run. Tyler Kleven (25:27 against Dallas) and Nikolas Matinpalo (20:16 against Boston) have both set new career high time on ice figures. Both came in games where the Sens finished with five defencemen, as Nick Jensen left Thursday’s win with an upper body injury.
“You want to be on the ice, you want to be making plays, you want to be an impactful player,” said Jake Sanderson about the extra minutes the defence have had to soak up.
“When a situation like last night comes with five [defencemen], you’ve got to embrace it… I thought [Artem Zub] played an awesome, super underrated game last night, and that’s just the type of defenceman he is. He’s so solid defensively, so we can always count on him.”
Sanderson pointed to a “solid mindset” when asked about the team’s ability to grind out wins and points lately.
“We’ve had some stretches where we haven’t played great in some games and we come back in the intermission, reset and regroup, go out and do the job. I think that was probably the best we’ve done it [on Thursday], so it feels good.”
