Ottawa Senators coach Travis Green shuffles lines

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Travis Green conducted what amounted to a Changing of the Guard on Friday.

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The Ottawa Senators head coach opted to shuffle the deck for practice at the Bell Sensplex after a listless 5-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night at the Canadian Tire Centre.

Recently acquired winger Fabian Zetterlund made a meteoric rise from the fourth line to the first line for the National Hockey League club’s 35-minute skate, but we’ll have to wait to see if he stays there for Saturday night’s game against the New Jersey Devils at the Prudential Center.

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Zetterlund, picked up in a trade with the San Jose Sharks, skated on the right side of centre Tim Stutzle and captain Brady Tkachuk. That spot had been occupied by veteran winger Claude Giroux, but he was moved to play with centre Shane Pinto and Ridly Greig.

Michael Amadio was in Zetterlund’s previous spot on the fourth line with Adam Gaudette and Matthew Highmore. The only line that stayed intact was the second unit of David Perron, Shane Pinto and Drake Batherson.

Given the way the Senators collapsed in the third period of a 6-3 loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday and caved in by trailing 4-0 only 20 minutes into the loss to the Avalanche, something has to change because Green can’t roll with the same look again in New Jersey.

Green was asked about getting Zetterlund more ice time before the Senators faced the Avalanche, and it appears that will be the case against New Jersey.

“We haven’t liked our game. That’s a big part of it,” Green said. “When you don’t win, you look for new answers. We’ll see if it works or not.”

Zetterlund has been scoreless in six games since he was acquired by the Senators, but he’s played a mostly minimal role until he had 16 minutes of ice time against the Avalanche.

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How can Zetterlund help Tkachuk and Stutzle? Well, he had posted 17 goals and 19 assists for 36 points in 64 games with the Sharks before being dealt.

“He’s a good player. He’s got good hands, he can shoot and he’ll be a good rush complement to our game,” Green said. “And you can tell that he gets excited to have the puck.”

True enough. It’s OK to stick with the status quo if you’re having success, but the Senators have hit a bump in the road and Green is trying to see if he can give his group a spark.

The Senators have been feast or famine at times this season — they lost five in a row in February before starting March with a six-game winning streak — and they need to halt this small skid immediately.

With 14 games left on the schedule, their chance of making the playoffs for the first time in eight years remains strong and they remain in control of their destiny after going 7-2-1 record in the past 10 games. They’ve been assisted by the fact that, except for the Montreal Canadiens, none of the teams chasing them in the NHL’s Eastern Conference are making pushes.

Green has spent a lot of time making sure Senators players look forward and not back. They can’t do anything about what’s happened in the past and that has to be the mindset against the Devils.

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“Because you lost two or three in a row, the next game doesn’t count more than another game,” Green said. “They all count. We want a team that wants to win badly and play their best hockey whether they’ve won six in a row or lost five in a row.

“Those are the types of teams that win in the long run. We don’t want to lose the next game, but we’re not going to try harder because of it. We want to try every night because we love winning and it’s important.”

The Senators will try to put Thursday’s loss to the Avalanche in the rearview mirror.

“At this point of the season there is no panic,” Tkachuk said. “You never want to lose big games down the stretch, but it happens and I know there will be a really good response on Saturday.”

“The Montreal loss stung in the fashion that it happened, and this one hurt in a different way. You get into a slippery slope if you go into Saturday thinking we’re going to lose. That’s not the case. We’ve got to put it behind us. It’s a fresh game, a new opportunity for us to make an impact and get back to our winning ways.”

The Senators could be buoyed by the return of veteran defenceman Nick Jensen, who has been dealing with a lower-body injury in recent months and has missed the past three games.

He was a full participant in the skate on Friday and should be ready to return.

“I will check with the trainers here in a bit. I hope so,” Green said. “He’s a big part of our team and we miss him when he’s out.”

Defenceman Artem Zub didn’t skate Friday, but Green said that it was a maintenance day for him.

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