PANIC BUTTON? Senators need to fix what's wrong Saturday in Boston

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It’s way too early to be pushing the panic button, but you can’t blame the Ottawa Senators fan base for having a high level of anxiety.

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Losers of two straight games — 5-1 to Buffalo and, most recently, 4-2 to the New York Islanders — the Senators will need to put a foot on the gas pedal Saturday in Beantown.

The team can’t continue to make mistakes that result in the puck ending up in the back of their net. It’s not like there’s a big margin of error for a team that looks great on some nights, but shows signs of being a non-playoff team on others.

After playing Boston, the Senators are in Toronto to face the Maple Leafs — both are Atlantic Division rivals. If the Senators hope to stay within reach of a playoff spot, they can’t have the losses stacking up.

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“This stretch of hockey is really big for us to start showing what we’re all about,” Senators captain Brady Tkachuk said. “it’s frustrating we’re not doing that on a consistent basis.”

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It’s not like Ottawa is getting Boston in mid-season form. The Bruins beat Calgary 4-3 in overtime Thursday, but they’ve had their struggles. With a 7-7-1 record, they’re three points up in the standings on the 6-7 Senators, but they’ve played two more games.

Most troubling for the Bruins is they’ve given up 11 more goals than they’ve scored (38 for and 49 against). The Senators have 45 goals for and 42 against. But the Senators aren’t worried about Boston’s troubles, they’ve got enough issues of their own.

“Boston is a good team, they’ve been a good team for a long time,” Senators coach Travis Green said. “It’s a good challenge for us going into that building, it’s the right time for that kind of challenge. We’re going to have to be ready to play.”

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“We need a really big response game Saturday, we need to find a way to figure out our game on the road … and fast,” Tkachuk said.

That response would be from Thursday’s loss to the Islanders, when Ottawa fell behind 3-0 before scoring two third-period goals to make it close.

Mistakes, including a turnover by goalie Anton Forsberg behind his net, were tough to overcome.

“Our execution didn’t look good early in the game,” Green said. “Simple passes were in the feet, we turned over pucks inside their blueline. When we got to our game, we did a lot of good things … just not enough to get the win.”

So far in November, the Senators are 1-3. It’s a month that hasn’t been kind to the team going back to its most recent playoff appearance in the 2016-17 season.

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Since then, the Senators are 27-46-3 in November (4-5 last season). A year ago, it got even worse in December, when the Senators went 6-9, including a six-game losing skid.

Is it, as Yogi Berra once called it, “deja-vu all over again?”

“It’s easy to say from the outside,” winger Drake Batherson said. “With the group we have, we don’t have that feeling. It’s a different mentality (this year).”

Finding consistency from shift to shift, game to game, is not an option; it’s necessary to achieve success. Something that’s needed to gain that is confidence.

“You need confidence,” defenceman Nick Jensen said. “You can’t go in thinking, ‘This is going to be the same as the last couple of nights.’ The season is a marathon. It’s game by game and really shift by shift. Our main focus should be how intense we can make that first shift, build it shift after shift. It’s what we did at the end of (Thursday’s) game, but we have to do it at the beginning.

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“We have to somehow push a little harder to tip it over the edge. We have guys who are playing some really good hockey. We have to take a mindset of winning every shift. We’re playing good, we take one shift off and it’s biting us.

“Mentally, it can weigh on you. You’re thinking, ‘We’re doing everything right, but we’re not getting the results.’ Guys start to grip the stick a bit harder, (they wonder) ‘What do I have to do differently?’ I don’t think we have to do a lot differently. Stick to the process.”

“It’s consistency. We’ve shown when we play hard, compete and work, we can win. If you don’t do that for 60 minutes, you won’t win.”

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PUCK DROPS

Centre Tim Stutzle missed Friday’s practice. Stutzle, according to Green, had a “bit of a shiner” after getting hit above the eye with a puck in the first period of Thursday’s game. He will play Saturday … There’s also “a chance,” probably a good chance, centre Shane Pinto will play Saturday … Mark Kastelic, who was dealt to the Bruins along with goalie Joonas Korpisalo in the deal where the Senators landed Linus Ullmark, has three goals and four assists in Boston. Asked about his former team during a media scrum Friday, he said: “I’ve got nothing but kind things to say about the (Senators), you can see they’re going in the right direction. I have a lot of positive memories. Asked about increasing his offence this season, he said: “I tried to earn the coach’s trust from Day 1, I feel once you do that, you get more opportunity. With more ice time, there’s more of an opportunity to (create) more offence. I’ve always felt I’ve got a lot more to give offensively.”

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