Twenty-three days after leaving the Senators\u2019 win over the Seattle Kraken with an upper-body injury, star defenceman Jake Sanderson was back practicing with his teammates, donning a yellow non-contact jersey at Baptist Health IcePlex in Fort Lauderdale ahead of a Tuesday game against Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, a sight for sore eyes, anytime one of your top guys are out of the lineup and you know you miss him, it\u2019s nice to have him back at practice,\u201d said Travis Green after the practice. \u201cHe looked sharp\u2026 that\u2019s a good sign that he\u2019s back out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Green said that Sanderson would not play on Tuesday, and that the Sens were monitoring his availability on a day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it was good, it\u2019s been a while, and I just think skating with the guys and the goalies and being able to move your feet and be good for the guys in practice was fun,\u201d Sanderson told Sens360\u2019s Jackson Starr.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough, especially for me, I haven\u2019t missed a ton of time in my career, so I think missing a few weeks can be tough, but we have great staff here in Ottawa, and I\u2019m in great hands here, and guys are keeping me company, so you know, hopefully get back here soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanderson had 11 goals and 48 points in 62 games before suffering the injury, putting him on pace for his best statistical season yet while averaging a career-high 24:49 of time on ice. Despite that, the Senators have played to a 7-3-1 record without their best minute muncher on the back end.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s exciting, I think for me, just take it day-by-day and see how it goes,\u201d said Sanderson of how he will ramp up to a return. \u201cBut I think just watching the guys the past few weeks, we\u2019re playing some of our best hockey we\u2019ve played all year. I\u2019m itching to get back to them when the time comes, and yeah, just keep cheering them on for now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sens had an off day on Sunday before the practice. Before that, they\u2019d embarked on a grueling stretch of nine games in 15 days. On Tuesday, they\u2019ll visit the Florida Panthers for the second time this season, where they lost 6-2 on Oct. 11.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s been a busy couple two weeks for us, so just to get two days here, get in the sun, relax a little bit, it\u2019s good, and I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll have a nice amount of energy tomorrow,\u201d said Shane Pinto.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re playing so many games it\u2019s tough to kind of work on the things you want to work on, so, yeah, today I thought I did a good job of that, and having Sandy out there was cool too. We got better, and I hope it translates to tomorrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously one of our best players, and just to see him back, skating with the boys, it\u2019s a good sign, and we can\u2019t wait to have him back, so whenever he\u2019s ready \u2014 hopefully it\u2019s soon [laughs] \u2014 either way we\u2019re going to keep grinding, but yeah, it was good to see him back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-three days after leaving the Senators\u2019 win over the Seattle Kraken with an upper-body injury, star defenceman Jake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5104],"tags":[5,4,72,25,5157,73],"class_list":{"0":"post-531512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa-senators","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-ottawa","11":"tag-ottawa-senators","12":"tag-ottawasenators","13":"tag-senators"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116319757988053009","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531512","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=531512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}