OTTAWA -- For what it's worth, the Arizona Coyotes will have the advantage of being the more rested team when they take on the Ottawa Senators at Canadian Tire Centre Tuesday night.
The Coyotes, who will be playing just their second game of the season after opening with an overtime victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on home ice Saturday, were kicked back in their Ottawa hotels while the Senators were getting crunched 5-1 in Detroit on Monday.
The game in Ottawa marks the first of six in a row on the road, within a 10-day span, for the Coyotes. All in the Eastern time zone.
"I think it's great for our team to get on the road," Coyotes coach Dave Tippett told the Arizona Republican. "We'll see what we're made of early."
That would be plenty of youth, for starters. The Coyotes dressed four rookies against the Flyers, including winger Lawson Crouse, defenseman Jakob Chychrun and centers Laurent Dauphin and Christian Dvorak. A fifth freshman, 2015 third overall pick Dylan Strome, was a healthy scratch Saturday and could be making his debut against the Senators.
"We're going into some buildings where we're not going to have time to be young and inexperienced," said Tippett, whose team will also make stops in Montreal, New York for both the Islanders and the Rangers, New Jersey and Philadelphia. "We're going to have to dig right in."
The Senators, meanwhile, will attempt to bounce right back from suffering their first defeat. After opening the season with an overtime win and a shootout win at home, they outshot the Red Wings 32-25 but had only a shorthanded goal by winger Ryan Dzingel to show for their efforts.
It was the second in two games for Dzingel, who played 30 games for Ottawa as a rookie last season and was then was the surprise of camp for new coach Guy Boucher.
"We weren't competing," Boucher said of the team's effort at The Joe. "And that's what you deserve when you don't compete."
While the Coyotes are expected to start No. 1 goalie Mike Smith, the Senators will go back to their starter, Craig Anderson. Backup Andrew Hammond played in Detroit and gave up a bad goal, the first of a hat trick by defensemen Mike Green, that opened the flood gates for the Red Wings. Their outburst saw them score three times in a 5:34 spread to take a comfortable lead into the intermission.
"You're asking for trouble when you react like that after a goal," said Boucher, whose power play was 0-for-3 and is now 0-for-9 on the season. "We're getting good shots but we're not screening the goalie. He's making good saves because he can see the puck."
The Senators will try to change that against the Coyotes.
"We know the mistakes we made," said Senators defenseman Dion Phaneuf. "We've got an important game (Tuesday) and it's about responding."
