The Ottawa Senators may be running out of time as they run into one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
The Senators do have a plan for Sunday\u2019s game against the visiting Carolina Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimplify and try to work a little harder,\u201d Ottawa forward Shane Pinto said. \u201cYeah, (Sunday) is a big game. Everybody knows the magnitude of these games.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Senators (39-27-10, 88 points) have lost four of their last five games as they compete with a few other teams for one of the last playoff spots in the Eastern Conference. They dropped a 4-1 decision to the visiting Minnesota Wild on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s little room for error on the part of Ottawa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith some of our injuries, we\u2019ve got to be spot-on,\u201d Senators coach Travis Green said.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes have played several desperate teams recently and they find benefits in that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you play teams that are kind of on that bubble, it\u2019s good for you to prep for the playoffs,\u201d Carolina forward Seth Jarvis said.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes (49-21-6, 104 points) already have secured a playoff spot and are one point away from clinching the Metropolitan Division title.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know that the prize is still out there,\u201d Carolina coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour said of the postseason ahead. \u201cThis basically qualifies you to go after it.\u201d<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve won four of their last five games, including Saturday night\u2019s 4-3 home victory against the New York Islanders. In their last two games combined, the Hurricanes have allowed opponents to put only 26 shots on goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was pretty impressive,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cI think our guys played the way we want them to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Green said there were uncharacteristic defensive lapses from the Senators in Saturday\u2019s game against Minnesota.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s easy to say, \u2018Play with urgency,’\u201d Green said. \u201cOur guys are trying. Our guys want to win. They want to win bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
A clunky power play didn\u2019t help matters for the Senators.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir execution can probably be better,\u201d Green said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to learn from the game, and we\u2019ve got another game (Sunday). That\u2019s the great part of this season, a lot of games coming, a lot of games that matter and we\u2019ve got to respond (Sunday).\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes have been strong on special teams. They\u2019ve notched a league-high 12 short-handed goals this season, including one in each of the past three contests.<\/p>\n
Jarvis had two goals Saturday, pushing his team-leading total to 32.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of chances, but to see it go in is huge,\u201d Jarvis said after ending his three-game goal drought.<\/p>\n
Ottawa had defenseman Jake Sanderson back in the lineup for the first time in nearly a month. He said he was a little rusty but is determined to make an impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this time of the year everybody is playing with some sort of injuries,\u201d Sanderson said.<\/p>\n
Carolina will have goalie Frederik Andersen back in net after Brandon Bussi worked Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Hurricanes center Sebastian Aho is riding a five-game point streak (one goal, five assists).<\/p>\n
Carolina\u2019s visit marks the third game in Ottawa\u2019s five-game homestand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ottawa Senators may be running out of time as they run into one of the best teams…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5107],"tags":[194,29,5176,5,195,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-542148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-hurricanes","8":"tag-carolina","9":"tag-carolina-hurricanes","10":"tag-carolinahurricanes","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-hurricanes","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116352540175274061","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542148","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=542148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}