It\u2019s been 1,214 days since Lassi Thomson last played in an NHL game, but that will change on Monday night in New York, as the Finnish defender checks into the lineup for the Ottawa Senators, who are missing Jake Sanderson, Nick Jensen, and Dennis Gilbert due to injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s a pretty awesome opportunity,\u201d said a beaming Thomson after taking morning skate on Monday. \u201cBeing around the boys now for the last almost two weeks, and seeing the group in the locker room after they win games, it\u2019s pretty awesome to be checking in right now. And obviously in New York, never played here before, it\u2019s a pretty cool moment for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Thomson\u2019s last appearance in the NHL (a road win over Anaheim on Nov. 25, 2022), he has been waived three times, claimed off waivers twice, spent a season back in Sweden, and played more than 150 games in the AHL. The former first-round pick\u2019s 14 goals this season with Belleville leads all AHL defencemen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thomson skated alongside countryman Nikolas Matinpalo at morning skate on the third pair. He said Matinpalo had been helping him through the travel but kept his advice to his new partner simple.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing special, I think I\u2019ll just try to enjoy the moment, obviously it\u2019s been over three years [since] the last time I played in the NHL,\u201d said Thomson. \u201cSo just try to enjoy the moment, and try to have fun, obviously it\u2019s been a good year in Belleville for myself, so it\u2019s a good opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomson joins a red-hot Senators team that has won eight of 12 games since the Olympic break and sits four points out of the second wild card spot in the East, with two games in hand on the New York Islanders.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing changes for us, we stay focused on how we want to play and our identity, and play as a team, right now we have everybody going, we have all lines playing a lot, so we\u2019ve got to keep pushing,\u201d said Claude Giroux.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we don\u2019t need to do anything special out there, just play our game and be consistent in how we\u2019re playing the game, and I think we\u2019ve been doing that, giving ourselves a chance to win pretty much every game, so we\u2019ve just got to keep playing like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCan\u2019t look past anything but tonight, tonight\u2019s effort, tonight\u2019s game,\u201d said Brady Tkachuk. \u201cAlways fun coming into this building and playing, they\u2019ve got some high-end talent over there, and any game\u2019s a difficult game, so tonight will present its own challenges, but that\u2019s what\u2019s exciting, getting ready to go for tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been 1,214 days since Lassi Thomson last played in an NHL game, but that will change on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-555859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555859","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=555859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}