On Saturday night at Canadian Tire Centre, the focus will turn back to the ice.
Following an 8-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche, the Senators will be looking to get back in the win column against another tough opponent — the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.
Following unsavoury, anonymous rumours being spread on social media speculating on Linus Ullmark’s leave of absence, Senators president of hockey operations and general manager Steve Staios came out in strong defence of his team on Thursday afternoon, a sentiment that Brady Tkachuk, David Perron, Tim Stützle, and Travis Green all appreciated and stood behind on Saturday morning.
“I don’t think anyone is pretty happy about a narrative being spread like that,” said Brady Tkachuk. “That’s just how it is in society and life now, that people can just say whatever they want, and [have] no repercussions, [they] don’t really realize who it affects. It’s just crazy, to bring up a crazy story like that and talk about people’s families and stuff like that too, I honestly can’t really wrap my head around it.”
Tkachuk and Green both said the team had no need to meet together to discuss anything. “There’s never been a cohesion problem, so there’s no need to hold a meeting,” said Green. “The players within our room knew right away that wasn’t the case, the rumour or whatever it was, I’m not a social media guy.”
Both Tkachuk and Stützle also threw their support behind their goalie. “We said from day one that he’s had our support, the organization’s support from day one,” Tkachuk said. “Now that he has to deal with this, it’s mind-blowing.”
"What annoys me the most is the things that are out there that not true, and I love my teammates,” said Stützle. “Everybody stands up for each other in the room. Especially with something like that. That’s more important than hockey, it’s family. If you go after someone’s family that’s not acceptable for us."
And with that, the focus in the room turned quickly back to the task at hand. “We needed to be better in Colorado, we’re not going to use [the distractions] as an excuse,” said Tkachuk.
“We own our game, and our whole focus is on our game tonight,” said Green. “We can’t focus on anything else other than our game and where we’re at tonight and who we’re playing tonight. You know, the game changes fast. When you’re winning you feel like you’re going to win forever, when you haven’t won in a few games, it gets harder. We just need to focus on our game, and we know how effective it is when we play well, and how strong it has been all year. We just haven’t found the wins.”
