Yahoo Sports Ottawa Senators Head Coach Travis Green Cancels Training Camp "Country Club"
Ottawa Senators head coach Travis Green arrived in the capital last spring with a reputation for running challenging training camps – making sure his team is physically ready and on the same page for opening night.
After his hiring in May, Green had good discussions with all of his new players, and one of the instructions was to make sure they're ready for camp in September.
Sens defenceman Jake Sanderson was asked after practice on Tuesday how Green's training camp has been different.
"Hard," Sanderson said with a light chuckle. "It's been really good. But you know, credit to the guys. We showed up here early before camp, so I think we were conditioned well and ready for it."
Sanderson said the club has been "practicing sharper" this month, focusing on compete level, winning puck battles, and quick passing. He was asked if he thinks this will set them up differently for the season this year.
"Yeah, I mean, we'll wait and see," Sanderson said. "I know our group's feeling more confident than in past years, that's for sure. Obviously, having a harder training camp as well is only going to help us too. We'll see what happens down the road here, but as of right now we feel really good."
It's always tricky for a player to talk about the new without sounding like they're ripping the old.
In recent seasons, the Senators had terrible starts to seasons under former head coach D.J. Smith, basically playing their way out of contention by the end of November. When searching for answers as to why that happened, at least some of the answers might be found in Sanderson's reasonable description of this year's camp.
Ottawa's best defenceman was asked to describe this year's camp and came out with words like "harder," "sharper," and focused on compete levels and puck battles.
Indeed, no active player will ever call his current coach's camp easy. Either the camp is legitimately hard, and he'll describe it as such. Or if it's easy, the player will still call it tough... unless he wants to get bag-skated into oblivion.
So, let's consider the words of a retired Senator with no skin in the game anymore.
Earlier this year, Bobby Ryan made it crystal clear on the "Coming in Hot" Podcast that there is a connection between the tone of past camps and the way the Senators have started.
"I've had camps with D.J. (Smith). They're a little country club-ish, right? Fitness testing was hard. Obviously, it's hard everywhere. But the camps, in general, were just a little country club-ish. So whoever comes in has to set the tone from day one at camp and just bury these guys and say, 'We're going.'"
"For me, that's the biggest thing," Ryan said. "Day one of training camp has gotta be a blood bath. It has to be. You have to absolutely skate these guys into the ground and put the systems in place.
"You've gotta set the tone in some way, shape, or form."
That's precisely what Travis Green is doing. Make no mistake, this club also had other issues last year that threw them off course – things like roster imbalance, injuries, and significant distraction.
But unless you have an all-star lineup, you can't cut corners at training camp and expect a great start.
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