David Kirouac-Imagn Images
The Ottawa Senators talk a lot these days about ‘Winning The Day.’ In fact, it’s such a big deal for them that we’ve used capital letters and put it in quote marks. It’s not exactly the big ‘BELIEVE’ sign that Ted Lasso taped up in the AFC Richmond dressing room, but it’s definitely a thing. Sometimes, it looks as simple as taking a day off when you need it or grinding through a tough practice when you’re not really feeling it. Other times, it’s about taking a puck under the visor and coming right back with a bunch of stitches above your eye and blood in your eyeball.
‘Winning The Day’ is one of those team-unifying slogans that people keep repeating until they believe it. It’s all about establishing a culture, whatever that means. “Sometimes, you hear all these phrases and clichés and you don’t really understand what it’s all about,” said Senators goalie Linus Ullmark. “But it’s about going about your day trying to be better. If you do that, you might not win every single game, because that’s totally unreasonable, but you’ll be in every single game.”
And sometimes, when you win the day, it resembles a hockey masterpiece, a symphony of skill and speed and efficiency that can take your breath away. It looks like the Senators’ 3-0 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs in mid-November, a game that makes you believe all the hype about this group of young and growing players might really be accurate. It’s the kind of game that has coach Travis Green’s head resting a little more comfortably on his pillow, knowing that the seeds that were watered with the hard lessons that come with lots of losing and immaturity before his arrival are starting to take root. “As much as (the young core) is part of the answer to winning,” Green said, “they’ve been part of the problem as well.”
Harsh, but true. That’s almost always to be expected when you commit to a strip-it-down-to-the-studs rebuild the way the Senators have.
Just under eight years ago, the Sens came within an OT goal of the Stanley Cup final. Then, they imploded. Since then, only the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks have worse records. The result has been forming a group of a bunch of young players who are all high draft picks and have had previous success doing it their own way but are generally clueless about what it takes to win in the best league in the world. And you often can’t surround them with stable,…