By this point in time, the hockey world is well aware of Jake Sanderson’s prowess as a minute-munching, do-it-all left-shot defenceman for the Ottawa Senators. What the hockey world was not quite aware of was that Sanderson could do it with an extra degree of difficulty — by using Michael Amadio’s right-handed stick.
Sanderson didn’t earn an assist on David Perron’s second period marker last night (Perron’s 800th career point), but his now-viral breakout pass to Drake Batherson kickstarted the sequence after Amadio gave his own stick to his defenceman.
“I broke my stick off the draw, and then got hemmed in for a little bit, and then [Claude Giroux] had the puck and he was yelling at me that his stick was [also] broken, so [Giroux] just passed it to me and he changed,” explained Sanderson, who ranks seventh in the league with a 25:14 average time on ice. “Yeah, it was a funny play.”
Sanderson said he took a split-second extra with the puck on his stick to decide the best mechanism to make the stretch pass. He debated using the stick right-handed but settled on using the backhand out of an abundance of caution.
“Yeah, I think for a half-second my mind actually wanted to switch hands, but I was the last guy back, so I didn’t want to screw around with it too much,” the 23-year-old explained.
“I think the first thing was just that I have to pass it off the heel of the blade, because if the puck moves to the toe, it’s just going to totally flip off,” he recounted. “I think I was just looking down at it a little bit longer than I normally do to move it up.”
Sanderson’s teammates didn’t even realize what had just happened.
“I honestly didn’t even see the play he made in real time, I was just trying to catch my breath on the bench,” said Amadio. “To see the replay of it, it was a pretty nice play by him to make with the wrong-handed stick.”
“I didn’t even know that until later on [Thursday] night, when I saw that online, but that was impressive, just another thing Jake Sanderson can do,” said Batherson.
“No, that was impressive, after watching that. I was the guy getting the pass and I didn’t even realize. It wasn’t quite on the tape, but I’ll give him credit,” laughed the winger.
