It\u2019s probably an understatement to say that Tim St\u00fctzle enjoyed playing with Team Germany running mate Leon Draisaitl during the Olympics in Milan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll share the ice with Draisaitl once again on Tuesday night as the Senators visit the Oilers, but that enjoyment might wear off as they return to their usual relationship of being opponents in the NHL.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was awesome, he was a great leader,\u201d said St\u00fctzle of his experience with the Oilers star in Italy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew him before, but not as well as obviously now spending every day with him, I had a lot of fun. Yeah, he\u2019s just a pro. He does everything the right way, to see him get to work every day, how he prepares for games, was awesome to see. Obviously he\u2019s an unbelievable player, not just in practice, [but] in games, it\u2019s been fun watching him and fun getting to play with him as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
After using Sunday as a travel day to fly from Toronto to Edmonton, the Senators practiced on Monday. That practice marked the first time St\u00fctzle has skated with the team outside of games since the Olympic break \u2014 he was labelled a game-time decision due to a sickness for Thursday\u2019s overtime loss to Detroit and didn\u2019t take morning skate before the Senators won in Toronto on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Therefore, it also marked the first time that St\u00fctzle met with the media since returning.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously because we didn\u2019t have a great round-robin, we had to play a lot of back-to-backs, so we played I think, five games in seven days, so there wasn\u2019t a lot of free time. When we had some rest days, we were actually resting and didn\u2019t actually leave the [Olympic] village,\u201d explained St\u00fctzle of his experience in Milan.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing for dinners, but also just hanging out in the physio room, watching hockey, watching other events. So, yeah, we were hanging out a lot with the team, but obviously if you play a lot of minutes and you play a lot of games, just trying to get as much rest as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he returns to practicing with the team, St\u00fctzle is eager to help will the Sens back into a playoff spot. Before play begins on Monday night, the Sens stand five points out of the second wild card position.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve been playing some good hockey games,\u201d he said. \u201cEspecially before the break, I think it was really important for a lot of guys to get some rest as well, and yeah, they came back with a lot of energy. It\u2019s been awesome to see, and I think against Detroit we played a solid game as well, maybe deserved a little bit better fate, but last game too, I think we played really well, and yeah, it was a big win for us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we\u2019ve just got to keep building. We keep getting better and keep trusting our process, and I think if we play the way we\u2019ve been playing, we have a chance to win every night. And we know it\u2019s going to be hard [to make the playoffs], but we definitely believe in this group.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s probably an understatement to say that Tim St\u00fctzle enjoyed playing with Team Germany running mate Leon Draisaitl…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-510505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}