The Sens currently sit 10 games under .500 and while they remain mathematically alive for the playoffs, there is certainly an eye on gaining some last minute experience to take into the 2021-22 campaign.
"Just our identity as a team [and] what we give up," Sens head coach D.J. Smith said when asked what he's hoping his team can achieve down the stretch. "Our goals against, continue to work at that. Our discipline away from the puck, just making it hard for other teams to get good looks [as] when we do that, we tend to get our own looks as well."
But perhaps more importantly, it offers the Sens' youth 10 more games to play at the NHL level before they head into the offseason.
Twenty players on the Sens' roster right now are under the age of 26. More so, nine of those players are 22 and younger. Aside from Victor Mete and Brady Tkachuk, none of the remaining seven have played more than 90 career NHL games.
"Obviously, some of these kids, the more they get to play, the more comfortable they are so we want them to feel comfortable coming into next year," Smith said.
One such example is Alex Formenton. The 21-year-old made his season debut on March 24 and in his 12 games this season, he's averaged 12:02 a night while getting 2:09 a game on the penalty kill.
"You want to finish the season strong," said Formenton, who has three goals this year. "As a team, as a group, we want to win as many games as we can and hopefully build that chemistry into next year.
"They're big games for us. We're going to be playing teams that are fighting for playoff spots so we're going to have to work our hardest and bring that into next year."
While the remaining games certainly matter for the Sens in terms of experience gained, as Formenton noted, the opposition in each contest are all in playoff contention. Ottawa plays Vancouver four times, Montreal and Winnipeg twice and Calgary and Toronto once to conclude their campaign.
And by facing a desperate opponent nightly, that presents a great learning opportunity for Smith's team.
"There's not a team that we play that's out of it yet so every one of these games, teams are scratching and clawing, so these are important minutes and great times for our kids to be out there and we'll continue to put them in those spots," Smith said.
