Tough skating drill to end Day 1 of camp sets tone for Ottawa Senators

Published Sep 19, 2024  •  4 minute read

Ottawa Senators' Nick Jensen skates during practice at the Canadian Tire Centre. Tony Caldwell/Postmedia

The Ottawa Senators began the on-ice portion of training camp Thursday with lots of enthusiasm. They ended it with some of the players hunched over, gasping for air.

Sending a strong message to the players, Travis Green, who was named the Senators head coach in May, had them doing line rushes — skating hard from one end of the ice to the other, over and over and over.

Article content

It was an eye-opener, maybe a harbinger of things to come, for the returning players who have probably needed a boot in the collective ass for a long time.

“It was a grind,” Senators captain Brady Tkachuk said. “But it finished off a great Day 1.”

“The buzz about the skating test was pretty high, everybody was talking about it in the summer,” winger Claude Giroux said. “It was hard, but guys put their head down, skated and got it done.”

Asked to describe himself as a head coach, Green said: “I’m fair, firm, demanding and honest.”

The firm and demanding part was on display Thursday.

Green has to fortify what has been a fragile player mindset as the team looks to shed the disappointments and failures of the past seven playoff-less seasons.

Pushing a team to find another gear is a good thing.

“I’m a strong believer in that,” Giroux said. “Since I’ve played (junior hockey), anytime we had a coach that challenged us in a good way, usually success happened after. It’s always good to get pushed — sometimes it’s player to player, sometimes it’s coach to player. If you can’t handle it, you’re in the wrong sport.”

Article content

Article content

Asked about his early impressions of the coach, Giroux said: “He’s very motivated. He can be relaxed and just talk about life, he can talk about hockey or he can be on you if you need a little push. It’s only been one day, but so far the communication has been been really good.”

Around Canadian Tire Centre, home base of the Senators, there is talk of culture, accountability and the “P” word — playoffs. Three things you could point the finger at as lacking for a long time.

Accountability is one of the core tenets for any team. Screw up enough, give a half-assed effort and you pay the price. For Green, benching as a way of sending a message is on the table.

“I would bench a player,” Green said. “I’ve never seen a player get benched for playing too good.

“Accountability comes in lots of different ways. The baseline of it is building a relationship, having open, honest communication with a player, gaining their trust. If you have that type of relationship, accountability is often a lot easier to have within your group.”

When general manager Steve Staios was looking to reshape his roster in the off-season, he first determined needs: Goaltending (dealing with Boston to acquire Linus Ullmark), veteran leadership and guys who would be willing to play with a competitive edge were among them.

Article content

“You’ve heard Travis use the word competitive,” Staios said. “You can have depth of competitiveness throughout your lineup, it was certainly an area of focus. Through the regular season, but especially in the playoffs. we want to have that type of competitiveness from each of our players, through lines one through four and through the defence corps.

“The players we added all have a natural competitiveness and they play to that on a nightly basis. They don’t have to be asked to do it, it’s natural for them.”

Last season, the Senators seemed to lack a physical edge and that circles back to that competitiveness. But Staios said it wasn’t because his team was “soft.”

“The team lost confidence, there’s a lot that happened to this group,” he said. “Are we more competitive (this season)? To a man, yeah. But I don’t think last year’s team was soft.”

The Senators need everybody pulling in the same direction — team first, that whole “we, not me” mentality.

What went wrong last season? The goaltending wasn’t good enough, but that was just one thing on a long list of reasons for failure.

Article content

Recommended from Editorial

1. 

   Ottawa Senators open camp with an eye towards playoff spot

2. 

   GARRIOCH: Senators, National Capital Commission continue to hammer away at deal for LeBreton Flats

“You can’t pin it just on the goaltending,” Staios said. “You look at the numbers; getting scored on early in a lot of those games was a tough thing. The margins are very, very slim from game to game. We feel like we’ve improved in (our goaltending), but there are a lot of things we can do as a team to be able to be more competitive in the structure and detail the coaching staff has been working on.”

What’s the biggest change from a year ago?

“Linus gives us some confidence,” Staios said. “The players we’ve brought in that have had success, they’ve been through long playoffs, they’ve won Stanley Cups, That experience, along with the goaltending, (those are big changes). Maybe the biggest next step is this coaching staff.”

Article content