GARRIOCH: Senators determined to learn from the loss to the Bolts, back-to-back Stanley Cup champions

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To be the best, you must beat the best.

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As the Ottawa Senators turn the page in a 5-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday, the road won’t be any easier as they prepare to face the Boston Bruins on Tuesday night at TD Garden.

With a 3-7-1 start in the first 11 games of the season, the Senators are not sitting where they wanted, ranking second to last in the Eastern Conference standings, but there is plenty of racetrack left on the year and the club put up a good fight in the loss to the two-time Stanley Cup champions at the Canadian Tire Center.

Senators want to be in the mix when teams return from the Olympic vacation in March. To do that, they cannot afford to dig too big a hole to start the season. It’s paramount that senators get back to scoring goals on time, playing solid defensive play, and getting the goal they need to be successful.

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Now, after having Sunday off to rest, relax and reset, the Senators will head to Beantown on Monday to try to end their four-game losing streak. Coach DJ Smith is hopeful the players can take the lessons they learned in the loss to the Bolts and get back on track against the Bruins.

“The most important thing (the Lightning) do is they keep playing and they don’t make big mistakes,” Smith said Saturday. “But they’ve been together for eight to 10 years, they know how to win hockey games and they go on and on and on.

“You make a mistake and they pounce on you and we can learn from that … You have to learn from that. You’re in a game like, they just play simple hockey over and over and over again. He’s the one who breaks first, and (on Saturday) we broke up first. “

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General manager Pierre Dorion wants this group to grow together, which means players like Brady Tkachuk, Drake Batherson, Josh Norris and Tim Stuetzle have to learn from these situations.

The key for senators is that if they bend, they cannot break. Right now, it seems like all the mistakes this team makes end up on the net. That’s where the senators have to clean up their performance because they have given up five goals in each of the last four losses.

People are quick to point fingers at the club’s defenders, but they are not alone in this. Forwards have to stop betting to try to score goals and do a better job on both ends of the ice. Being strong defensively is a mindset and that’s what Smith is trying to help young forwards understand.

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A poor substitution on Saturday resulted in Steven Stamkos’s third-half lead goal to break the 2-2 tie. Then just minutes later, Ondrej Palat scored what turned out to be the winner. Teams that have won before, like the Bolts, are just waiting to seize their opportunities.

“It just goes to show that details are a huge part of winning NHL games,” said backup captain Thomas Chabot. “When you look at (Tampa) and the way they played, they just played consistently throughout the game. They kept putting the record behind us and kept checking to get a chance of that.

“Look at us, we made a little mistake on a line change in the third, they score on that. It just shows you that this is a team that has been winning for a reason and that they didn’t win the Stanley Cup just like that. It shows you that they have a game plan, they are fulfilling it and it is working for them. “

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That’s one area Smith feels the Senators need to improve on because this team has struggled to be consistent for 60 minutes. They outscored the Bolts 13-4 in the first period, then were outscored in the second. But a late goal from Tkachuk tied it 2-2 heading into third.

It will be interesting to see what adjustments Smith makes against the Bruins.

He switched all of the club’s defensive pairs on Saturday by putting veteran Nikita Zaitsev with Chabot, while Artem Zub was alongside Victor Mete. The third pair was Nick Holden with Josh Brown, while Michael Del Zotto was a healthy scratch.

Zaitsev was scratched in the Sens 5-2 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday and it has been one of the biggest disappointments this season. His lack of consistency has caught the organization off guard because he has been so dependable the last two years.

“We were better defensive until a couple of errors in the third, but defensively we were much more solid and we didn’t allow a lot of oddball runs and we had a lot of zone time against a really offensive team,” Smith said. . “We did so many good things away from the album, five against five we worked as a whole.

“We didn’t have anyone who was a passenger (Saturday), but we didn’t get the result we wanted. You play like this most of the time you’re going to win. “

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Twitter: @sungarrioch