Senators players not currently in Italy for the Olympics returned to Canadian Tire Centre on Tuesday afternoon. Ottawa last played on Feb. 5 in Philadelphia, and since then the team has been on a CBA-mandated break.
“Nice to get some sunshine, and just to relax and rest a little bit,” said Thomas Chabot, who said he travelled to Saint Barthélemy with his wife and teammate Fabian Zetterlund. “Fun to be back though, at this time of the year, I always say it’s nice to get [away] for a couple of days, but then a couple of days in you start thinking about hockey, so it’s nice to be back.”
The practice comes nine days ahead of the team’s return to game action (Feb. 26 against Detroit), and Travis Green said that the entire objective of those days will be to get the team back up to game speed.
“Obviously we’d rather, if you ask any of the guys, we’d rather just be playing games right away again, but the Olympics are going on which are a lot of fun to follow, but then it’s on us here to kind of take advantage of it and work on our games,” said Chabot.
“We’re not overthinking it, that’s for sure,” said Green when asked if the practice time will be nice for the team during a condensed schedule.
“But we are putting a lot of thought into how we take each day, what we want to accomplish, what we want to get out of it, and making our players peak at the right time… It’s almost like a mini-training camp, in a way.”
Two goalies, five defencemen, and nine forwards took part in the practice. David Perron, who underwent a surgery in January to address a sports hernia, skated on his own before the team. Stephen Halliday returned to Belleville over the break and remains with the B-Sens, with whom he has recorded three points in four games in his latest AHL stint.
“Good to get a little reset, good to see all the boys out today,” said Shane Pinto. “Today, just kind of get your legs under you, and try to remember [how] to play hockey again, and yeah, it was a good day.”
