And that was where they were turning next, to the future, to what they hope might come out of this move, to the jolt they’ve seen other teams get from coaching changes this season.
“It’s all about putting our best foot forward and [playing] our best game tonight,” Tkachuk said. “That’s big for us, especially where we’re at right now and how things have gone as of late. We need to just learn from our mistakes, take accountability as a group and responsibility for the way we’ve been playing and fix it.”
To that end, the Senators will have two familiar faces guiding them. Martin coached Ottawa for nine seasons from 1995-04, before returning to the organization as a senior adviser to the coaching staff Dec. 6. Alfredsson is the Senators’ all-time points leader (1,157), who has been working in a player development and coaching role since Oct. 14.
“I’m excited about our hockey club,” Martin said. “I like our youth. I like our enthusiasm, our energy that we bring to the table. Our skill level. I think we’ve got a couple of areas to work on but it’s a process. But I’m excited about the new challenge.”
Martin said his message to the players is that the team needs to manage the game better, the highs and lows, making sure they can weather the lows to get back to the highs. The details and special teams are other areas of focus in the days ahead, as Martin expects to stick with the same system for now.
The excitement is particularly acute in adding Alfredsson to the staff. He had previously been unsure about the demands of being behind the bench but, after talking with his wife Monday, “she gave her blessing.”
He went on the ice with forward Shane Pinto and then called president of hockey operations and interim general manager Steve Staios back to accept the role. His flight landed in Arizona late Monday night.
Asked what he can offer the team, Alfredsson said, “The emotions of a game, the ups and downs, that you stick with it. I think we have struggled a bit with when we are having a moment or a stretch in a game where we’re hemmed in our own end, we don’t respond great all the time. How to handle that, so we don’t dig ourselves deeper in a hole or change the momentum. Stuff like that will be where I’m most useful.”
Alfredsson emphasized that he’s confident they can find a way, as a new staff, to help the Senators turn things around. Their goal, at the moment, is to become a “more stable team over 60 minutes and not have so many ups and downs,” as he put it. “If that translates into wins or losses, we don’t know, but I think the message is going to stay the same and in the end we’re going to get where we want to get.”
The players believe the effort has been there, they just need to channel that to the right places. They know that some of what’s gone wrong is fixable, including their discipline, their intelligence in some areas of their game.
They have the tools. They have the jolt.
Now, they have to execute.
“When changes like this happen, it starts with the coach and then, if things don’t get figured out, then other things happen,” Tkachuk said. “For us, we want to win as a group. We want to win with the guys that we have. We just need to learn from our mistakes, hold ourselves accountable for the mistakes that we’ve made here in the last little bit.”
Because changing the coach can only do so much. Ultimately, for the players, it’s up to them.
“With the roster that we have, I think we had high expectations -- we still do -- for this team and when you don’t meet those, changes are going to be made,” Chychrun said. “We still have a lot of belief in this room. It’s still early in the year. We have a lot of games in hand. Things can change fast in this league.
“That’s our mindset is we’re not out of this thing and we need to just take it one day at a time and work on the areas that we need to work on and things that we’ve been lacking in our game that’s been contributing to these losses and turn this thing around. You never know what’s going to happen.”
