Travis Green challenged his players to step up and he got the desired response.<\/p>\n
After falling 4-1 to the Minnesota Wild Saturday afternoon, the Ottawa Senators head coach was less than pleased with the effort from some of his players.<\/p>\n
Sunday, his entire team responded and was rewarded with a 6-3 victory over the Eastern Conference-leading Carolina Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
Ottawa (40-27-10) is in a battle with the Detroit Red Wings, Columbus Blue Jackets, New York Islanders, Philadelphia Flyers and Washington Capitals for the final wild-card berth the Eastern Conference. Sunday\u2019s victory allowed them to remain in the final spot but with just five games remaining Ottawa will need to find a way to match that effort and desperation down the stretch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought everyone responded with a better game,\u201d said Green. \u201cEspecially the guys that I didn\u2019t think played that well (Saturday). Just played a little harder, played a little quicker, went to harder places.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he didn\u2019t name him specifically there\u2019s no denying the Senators needed more from leading scorer Tim Stutzle.<\/p>\n
Coming into the game Stutzle had one goal in his last eight outings.<\/p>\n
Stutzle left no doubt of his offensive abilities with an incredible solo effort midway through the first period to give Ottawa a 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Coming off the bench, Stutzle intercepted an Eric Robinson pass, cut through the middle and beat K\u2019Andre Miller, then Sean Walker before putting on the breaks in front to pull Frederik Andersen to the corner and go backhand into a wide-open net.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a superstar moment,\u201d said Ottawa captain Brady Tkachuk. \u201cJust made a great play under the stick, had so much speed so quickly that I couldn\u2019t believe that and then made an unbelievable move. It was a huge goal for our group.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Ottawa to have any success they will need Stutzle to be at his best.<\/p>\n
Tkachuk spoke of the lessons learned from the loss to Minnesota and importance of responding with a better effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey won the battles, and they\u2019re hard to play against and give us space and we wanted to do that against a team that\u2019s notorious for doing that,\u201d said Tkachuk. \u201cI guess they\u2019re a role model in the way that games should be played.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tkachuk added they\u2019ve taken inspiration from those types of teams and want to replicate the style seeing as it often leads to success.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a playoff team,\u201d said Carolina\u2019s Taylor Hall. \u201cI don\u2019t know if they\u2019re going to make the playoffs, but that\u2019s a team that plays playoff hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Senators\u2019 power play also found some much-needed life. Ottawa was 1-for-13 with the man advantage coming into the game and finally found a way to capitalize scoring on both its opportunities Sunday.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s likely a strong correlation to the fact Jake Sanderson is back in the lineup. Sanderson quarterbacks the first power-play unit and in his absence it struggled.<\/p>\n
Much had been made about Linus Ullmark needing a rest just over a week ago but he played both weekend games and was solid in both starts.<\/p>\n
If Ullmark continues his style of play and the Senators can find a way to get Stutzle scoring and ignite their power play they stand a good chance.<\/p>\n
Ottawa\u2019s final five games won\u2019t be easy. They host the Tampa Bay Lightning Tuesday, Florida Panthers Thursday before heading out on the road where they\u2019ll take on the New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils in a back-to-back before closing out the season against the Toronto Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 6, 2026.<\/p>\n
Lisa Wallace, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travis Green challenged his players to step up and he got the desired response. After falling 4-1 to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-585877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-ottawa","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585877","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=585877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}