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A couple of weeks before the Ottawa Senators set off on their Cinderella run to the post-season in January, Tim Stutzle ditched the razor.
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Near the bottom of the National Hockey League‘s Eastern Conference standings at the time, every game going forward would have a do-or-die, post-season feel to it. Why not also look the part?
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“We’ve been in the mood for a long time now,” Stutzle said Friday ahead of jetting off to Raleigh, N.C., for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. “I feel like we’ve been playing playoff hockey since the 40-game mark, just kind of had to win every game.”
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By April, Stutzle had grown a modest beard and somewhere along the way, captain Brady Tkachuk had joined him.
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After a 21-6-4 heater catapulted the Senators into the first wild-card spot in the conference, and their second consecutive playoff berth, it was time for the pair to start all over again.
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When Ottawa’s Round 1 matchup with the Carolina Hurricanes gets underway at Lenovo Center in Raleigh, N.C., on Saturday, it will undoubtedly be a smoother transition into playoff-mode for the team, as opposed to last year.
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The Senators’ young core, then yet to experience an NHL post-season, essentially went in blind into the Battle of Ontario, and Game 1 against the Toronto Maple Leafs was all too predictable.
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“I remember just wanting to get out there and get that first shift out of the way,” forward Dylan Cozens recalled. “I would say it was mostly excitement, but obviously some nerves, too.”
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Said Stutzle: “Just kind of coming into that series, we were all maybe a little bit too hyped up, took too many penalties.”
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The Sens were severely undisciplined in the seco