8-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche<\/a> to make room for the return of centre Lars Eller from injury.<\/p>\nTop centre Tim Stutzle said he reached out to Ullmark after he took a leave of absence to let him know that his teammates supported him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI texted him right after when he left the team for something completely different. Which we don\u2019t even have to get into, it\u2019s something mental-health related,\u201d Stutzle said. \u201cEverybody knows that out there. I texted him. Just told him that we all support him for whatever he\u2019s been going through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stutzle said the players had to ignore the noise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to try and (tune) this thing out,\u201d Stutzle said. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve been doing is just trying to focus on a day-to-day basis. And what annoys me the most is things out there that are not true. And I love my teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody stands up for each other in the room, and, especially with something like that, that\u2019s more important than hockey. And, if you go after someone\u2019s family, that\u2019s not acceptable to us. We just try to support every single guy and just be a good teammate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Veteran winger David Perron said he\u2019d seen a lot over his National Hockey League career, but never anything like this.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess it\u2019s a Canadian market, so it\u2019s a little bit different in that regard,\u201d Perron said. \u201cAnd we have enough adversity right now on the ice that obviously adds to it. We think in the room we\u2019re managing it fine in that regard. Not fine enough in the game we had against Colorado, but I think we\u2019re excited for another challenge tonight against Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ullmark\u2019s absence has been magnified by the fact that 23-year-old netminder Leevi Merilainen has struggled mightily. Merilainen went into the visit by the Panthers with a 6-9-0 record, a 3.50 goals-against average and an .867 save percentage.<\/p>\n
Merilainen made his eighth straight start with the Panthers in town, and the Senators have the worst collective save percentage in the NHL at .873.<\/p>\n
The Senators confirmed on Friday that they\u2019d signed veteran goalie James Reimer to a professional tryout. He was on the ice on Saturday for the third straight day with Ottawa\u2019s American Hockey League affiliate in Belleville.<\/p>\n
Reimer, who played for Team Canada at the Spengler Cup in Switzerland over the holidays, suited up for 24 games with the Anaheim Ducks and Buffalo Sabres last season.<\/p>\n
He hadn\u2019t been on the ice for nearly a week since leaving Europe, but may start on Sunday for Belleville against the Rochester Americans.<\/p>\n
Reimer has played 525 games in his NHL career with the Leafs, Panthers, Sharks, Hurricanes, Wings, Ducks and Sabres. He has a 225-187-65 record in his career with a 2.89 goals-against average and a .910 save percentage.<\/p>\n
bgarrioch@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fuming Brady Tkachuk came out swinging off the ice on Saturday. The Ottawa Senators captain wasn\u2019t the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5104],"tags":[233,536,229,826,144,831,93,5,6874,4810,68,8380,539,285,4,72,25,5157,63,73,5158,41085],"class_list":["post-402623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-ottawa-senators","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-brady-tkachuk","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-canadian-tire-centre","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-david-perron","tag-detroit-red-wings","tag-hockey","tag-james-reimer","tag-lars-eller","tag-leafs","tag-leevi-merilainen","tag-linus-ullmark","tag-national-hockey-league","tag-nhl","tag-ottawa","tag-ottawa-senators","tag-ottawasenators","tag-panthers","tag-senators","tag-steve-staios","tag-stutzle"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115879481577715627","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}