Nick Cousins has played on playoff teams for the last six seasons, so he\u2019s no stranger to meaningful hockey and loud arenas in April and beyond. The past two springs with Ottawa, though, he hasn\u2019t just felt it in the rink, but wherever he goes in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s certainly the best time of year. You can feel the buzz in the city, weather\u2019s getting a little nicer \u2014 maybe not today \u2014 it\u2019s an exciting time right now,\u201d says Cousins, a Stanley Cup winner with the Florida Panthers in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, when I go to Farm Boy, somebody usually stops me, and says \u2018keep going,\u2019 and \u2018we\u2019re cheering for you guys,\u2019 and usually stops for a picture and stuff like that. That goes a long way,\u201d says Cousins.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been there a couple times with my daughter, and it\u2019s cool for her to see that, and obviously it\u2019s nice to know that they have our backs and they\u2019re pulling for us. That part of playing in a Canadian market is cool and something you don\u2019t take for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople at the grocery store, stuff like that, that\u2019s happened. People are very friendly and respectful, and you give them 30 seconds of your time, it makes a lot of their days,\u201d said Lars Eller.<\/p>\n
Eller has experienced many springs in his career \u2014 some happy, and some sad. Though his teams have made the playoffs 12 out of his 16 seasons so far in the NHL and won a Stanley Cup, those times his season has ended in mid-April still loom large in his mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an excitement and an energy [here right now]. A lot of teams right now, almost half the teams in the league right now are playing almost meaningless games, I\u2019ve been in that position as well, that\u2019s not fun,\u201d said Eller.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe buildings\u2019 energies are dead, the energy in the room is not great, so we\u2019re in a fantastic position as far as that goes, every game matters, it matters a lot. It just makes it inspiring to go to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
After all, a Canadian proverb jokes that there are only two seasons in Canada \u2014 hockey season and construction season. The only thing worse than construction season is construction season in a city whose NHL team has long been eliminated from playoff contention.<\/p>\n
With a win over the Carolina Hurricanes on Sunday at Canadian Tire Centre, the Ottawa Senators have advanced one step closer to a happier construction season, stringing together their second straight 90-point season for the first time since they did so in 2006\u201307 and 2007\u201308.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the energy in the building has been really good, you can certainly feel that especially towards the end of games, yeah, that\u2019s something I\u2019ve noticed,\u201d said Lars Eller about the love the team has felt from the fans lately.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt our home games, our fans are awesome. They\u2019re very loud for us and they give us a lot of help out there from the seventh man, so it\u2019s been great to hear from them, and hopefully we can make the final push here,\u201d said Michael Amadio.<\/p>\n
As those memories of meaningful spring hockey and the return of the Sens Mile come to the forefront of fans\u2019 minds, chants of \u2018We Want Playoffs\u2019 have been commonplace at Canadian Tire Centre in the third period of games, encouraged by the 6-2-2 home record the Sens have rolled to since the Olympic break.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Sunday, though, those chants came even sooner in the game, as a crowd of 16,857 diehards rescheduled their Easter dinners to watch the Sens roll over the three-time defending Eastern Conference finalist Hurricanes in a commanding 6-3 win.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese last few games, they\u2019ve come out really strong, it\u2019s been fun to listen to them chanting \u2018We Want Playoffs\u2019, they always support us, and we know they\u2019re always there, and that\u2019s what we love about them,\u201d said Shane Pinto.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s human that you hear it, right?\u201d said Warren Foegele about the chants. \u201cI think obviously you try to stay in the moment, but whenever you have a fanbase that supports you that loud, you obviously are pretty grateful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Cousins has played on playoff teams for the last six seasons, so he\u2019s no stranger to meaningful…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5104],"tags":[5,4,72,25,5157,73],"class_list":{"0":"post-546149","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\/116365225807853580","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546149","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=546149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}