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Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
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The Ottawa Senators will not pack their bags for Seattle on Tuesday because their game against the expanding Kraken at the Climate Pledge Arena on Thursday was added to the growing list of postponed games.
The Senators got the news Monday afternoon when the roster took another hit with top defender Thomas Chabot added to the club’s COVID-19 protocol roster along with forwards Chris Tierney and Zach Sanford plus assistant coach Bob Jones.
That brings the total number of players on the protocol to nine when the trio were joined by Josh Norris, Tyler Ennis, Dillon Heatherington, Nick Paul, Jacob Bernard-Docker and goalkeeper Anton Forsberg.
Eight of the club’s last nine games have been postponed and the Senators will head to Vancouver on Friday to face the Canucks on Saturday night at Rogers Arena to begin what is now a four-game journey through western Canada. with stops in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg. In November, the club had three postponed games with 10 players in protocol.
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General manager Pierre Dorion has been forced to juggle the squad. Defender Michael Del Zotto was removed from the club’s AHL affiliate in Belleville along with Scott Sabourin, but the Senators were still short of skating when they hit the ice at the Canadian Tire Center.
The club was preparing as if Seattle were to be played, but the lineup would have looked nothing like opening night in October and it would not have been an NHL roster in any way.
The senators would not have had any of the centers they started the season with had they faced Seattle. The club used winger Drake Batherson, who played junior middle, as a center during Monday’s skating between captain Brady Tkachuk and Belleville’s call-up of Logan Shaw.
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“It’s getting difficult right now. Guys keep going down, “coach DJ Smith said Monday. “If history repeats itself, there will be a couple more (Tuesday). We were already without, with injuries, it was nine guys against Toronto (Saturday in a 6-0 loss) and now we are in the 12-13 range.
“If you play, you have to be ready and no one will take you lightly, so we will be ready if we play.”
Taking Chabot out of the mix is a huge success for senators.
He is ranked # 1 in the league in average ice time with 23:25 per game and also plays in all situations by being a quarterback in the power game, eliminating penalties and relying on 5v5.
Defender Erik Brannstrom was the power play’s first unit quarterback Monday and just returned Saturday from a broken hand that kept him out for more than seven weeks.
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“It makes us young. We are probably the youngest team in the league as it has been for the last six weeks, ”Smith said. “Certainly, without it, you will be able to see everyone on display. The guys are going to have minutes they haven’t had before and we’ll see how they do it. “
The top couple during skateboarding was Nick Holden and Artem Zub.
“You’re losing a guy who plays 30 minutes a night,” Smith added. “He plays all the important minutes and creates a lot of offense for us and he can skate. He also plays fatigue-free minutes for us. That is a skill that many people do not have.
“Late turns, ice, he can still play at the same rate a turn starts at. It’s a huge loss for us, but teams lose guys all the time. That’s how you find out what you’ve got, the guys go in there and find out how they can handle the best players on the other team. “
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With the new quarantine rules in Ontario, players only have to spend five days in protocol before being released. Forsberg will be out of protocol on Tuesday, Ennis will follow on Wednesday, while Norris, Heatherington, Paul and Bernard-Docker are scheduled for Thursday.
Chabot, Tierney, Sanford and Jones will complete their isolation on Friday.
Forsberg, Ennis, Norris, Heatherington, Paul and Bernard-Docker were unable to get dressed Thursday. With current border restrictions, someone with COVID-19 cannot return to Canada until 14 days after testing positive.
That’s why Smith has pointed out that the Senators will be close to their full team on Saturday when they face the Canucks. The club will skate in Ottawa for the next three days and depart for Vancouver on Friday.
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Having been through this scenario before, it seems senators are getting used to it.
“There are a lot of key guys on our team that are out right now,” Tkachuk said. “It is the adversity that we ended up with when we had the first wave at the beginning of the year. We thought we had it fixed.
“I’ve talked to all these guys and all of their symptoms are mild at best and they feel like they can still play with the symptoms they have or the ones that have played worse before. It sucks, of course, we miss those guys because they are key guys on the ice and in the locker room.
“It’s just a lot of adversity that we’ve been facing and it’s a lot of things that we can’t control.”
Reference-ottawasun.com