In just a few hours, the attention will turn away from previews, hype videos, head-to-head stats, and the focus will shift to the ice.<\/p>\n
With a series of playoff hockey under their belts, the Ottawa Senators will be expecting \u2014 and better prepared for \u2014 what lies ahead when they step onto the ice in Raleigh, N.C., just after 3 p.m. this afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe achieved one goal of ours, now we have the opportunity to set the stage for another,\u201d said Brady Tkachuk. \u201cI know my focus, my team\u2019s focus is nothing past Game 1 to the first TV timeout.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ottawa will be looking for a better start than last year\u2019s postseason, when they dropped the first three games of Round 1 to Toronto before coming back and taking the series to six games. Some keys to that are being disciplined and not letting the moment be too big for the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just knowing more what to expect, we went through it once, we played in the first round against probably our biggest rival last year,\u201d said Thomas Chabot about how this time around feels different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean obviously, I think the first game we gave up four [power play] goals, obviously you never want that to happen no matter the circumstances, but also we took too many penalties,\u201d said Tim St\u00fctzle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCarolina has a good power play as well, we\u2019ve got to find a way to play hard but also stay out of the box, and we kind of preached it all season long that that\u2019s we want to play, and I think our penalty kill has gotten tremendously better, but it\u2019s going to face a huge challenge against a good Carolina team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Entering that series, the Sens had 12 regulars who were getting their first taste of playoff hockey. This time around, it\u2019s the complete opposite, with at least last year\u2019s six games populating almost every player\u2019s resume.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think throughout this playoff series, obviously throughout a long series as well, there\u2019s going to be periods you don\u2019t like, shifts you don\u2019t like, but it\u2019s the way you get out of those shifts and the way you come back in the next period,\u201d said St\u00fctzle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s going to be a really big factor for us, just kind of focusing on what we have to do, and playing our way, playing the style we want to play, and I think then it\u2019s going to be really exciting for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
St\u00fctzle, Tkachuk, Chabot, and Jake Sanderson were all out of the lineup for the final two regular season games, helping each of them get closer to full health for Game 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, obviously it\u2019s been a long year, lots of games, yeah, it was good, I think the other guys getting in the lineup did a great job, kind of like all season long,\u201d said St\u00fctzle. \u201cI think it was good for me to get a little bit of rest, but also really excited to get back, it feels like forever since I\u2019ve played, so very excited for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reset \u2014 both physical and mental \u2014 comes at the perfect time, because as St\u00fctzle sees it, everything that\u2019s come before now is essentially wiped clean.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlayoffs is kind of like a new season, by itself,\u201d said St\u00fctzle. \u201cI feel like the best 16 teams in the league, every team you face is going to be a good team, it\u2019s going to be a good matchup, so for us, it\u2019s just, like I said, if we play the way we want to play, that gives us momentum, and that gives us the confidence we have in our team\u2019s play, and that\u2019s going to be really important for us the way we finish the season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In just a few hours, the attention will turn away from previews, hype videos, head-to-head stats, and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-612842","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\/612842","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=612842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}