If you had told Travis Green back in November that the Ottawa Senators were two points back of a playoff spot with eight games remaining, he\u2019d be perfectly fine with the situation the team now finds itself in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would have taken it, and we\u2019re taking it now,\u201d said Green after morning skate on Thursday morning ahead of a meeting with the Buffalo Sabres. \u201cDoes it mean we\u2019re getting in? No, it doesn\u2019t. It means we\u2019ve got to bring it, and we\u2019ve got to play.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Green might have been a little surprised that they\u2019d be on their 13th defenceman of the season, with the recall and pending season debut of farmhand Cam Crotty coming just hours before the Sens took the ice for the skate. Crotty will play in place of Carter Yakemchuk, who has entered concussion protocol from a hit he suffered in their 6-3 loss to Florida on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we have some injuries? Yeah, we do. But we\u2019ve never talked about it, we\u2019ve never worried about it, and we\u2019re not going to do it now,\u201d said a passionate Green. \u201cAnd we\u2019re going to worry about tonight, worry about Buffalo, worry about our teammates, not worry about \u2014 no offence, but to the white noise and to the talk that\u2019s outside of our locker room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crotty, who has two NHL games under his belt, is excited to join a beleaguered Sens blueline and make his team debut. The defender spoke on Thursday morning of some fond memories he had in the building, such as playing in an intermission game as a kid and being a flag bearer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just trying to come in here and help any way I can, but yeah, things like that are kind of full circle moments in some ways, which is pretty cool,\u201d said the 26-year-old. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of excitement, obviously, just for me personally, I\u2019ve watched games in this building, I\u2019ve skated on this ice, but this will be the first time skating in an important game. So it\u2019s a lot of excitement for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crotty played three seasons at Boston University after being drafted in the third round by Arizona in 2017. He broke into the NCAA as a rookie alongside now-captain Brady Tkachuk. \u201cYeah, it\u2019s cool, obviously,\u201d said Crotty about the opportunity to play with Tkachuk again after so many years. \u201cIt has been a while since being freshmen together, but it\u2019s going to be cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Green said it\u2019s been a challenge with so many fresh faces on the back end, and that the team needs to come together as a five-man unit to help them out, especially on the breakout.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we\u2019ve talked a lot about it,\u201d said Green. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to fast track a lot of our defencemen, but again, we\u2019re going to have to have all five guys helping out, being involved in our breakouts, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Green also emphatically stood behind Linus Ullmark, who will get the nod in net on Thursday, as the Sens\u2019 starter down the stretch. \u201cHe\u2019s our number one goalie, he\u2019s been playing well since he came back, but in saying that, everyone in the room understands that it\u2019s been a bit of a rough year for him off the ice, on the ice,\u201d said Green.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think since he\u2019s come back from his leave, he\u2019s played well, I don\u2019t know what our record is since then, and he needed a rest [on Saturday], simple as that. And there\u2019s not a lot else to say about that, he needed a rest, and he didn\u2019t play that night. And we\u2019re going to have to win some games with Reims in the net too, and we have before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s game marks the first of a five-game homestand for the Senators, with a chance to snap a three-game losing streak.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re excited to play, we know we didn\u2019t play very well last game,\u201d said Green. \u201cBut again, we got a little lucky in the games that night, no one else got any points, and like I said, we\u2019ve got eight games left, we\u2019ve put ourselves in a good spot, we\u2019ve scratched and clawed our way to get back, and we\u2019ve just got to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you had told Travis Green back in November that the Ottawa Senators were two points back of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537048,"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-537047","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\/116336599255080885","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537047","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=537047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}