In his second game of the preseason, the veteran blueliner took a team-high 26 shifts alongside Jordie Benn, registering a shot on net and a minus-one rating. Alzner agreed that a lack of cohesion may have impacted his squad's ability to get the job done.
"We had a tough time with execution on both ends of the puck and making plays out of the zone, in the offensive zone and positioning," he explained."You can tell we're just a little bit in between.
"You always think of chemistry as offensive chemistry. You don't necessarily think about it in the neutral zone or the defensive zone and that seems to be what we're missing right now."
Head coach Claude Julien acknowledged that it can be a challenge to try to bring a big group of individuals together in a short period of time and expect them to be on the same page on the ice.
"It's difficult when you have a lot of AHL players, it's a lot of new players at once. When they come in one at a time, it's an easy adjustment onto the team. For several of them, it was all new, which explains why some of them didn't do the right thing in certain situations," outlined Julien, whose club announced after the game that four players - Brett Lernout, Daniel Audette, Jeremy Gregoire and David Broll - had been cut from camp. "It can ruin other people's rhythm, but it happens. On the hockey side, you have to look at things objectively and see the positives we were expecting to see from certain players."