Stars in playoff race as they visit Senators

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OTTAWA -- Guy Boucher calls the word "spoilers" a "loser term." The Ottawa Senators coach wants his team to focus on setting itself up to be better next season, not the opponents and their situation.

At the same time, the Senators damaged the Florida Panthers playoff chances with a 5-3 victory in the Sunshine State on Monday, and they could do the same to the Dallas Stars when the two teams meet at Canadian Tire Centre on Friday.

The Stars, who are in a playoff fight that includes five teams, arrive in Ottawa with just one point from the six that were on the table in their last three games. That came in Wednesday's 6-5 shootout loss in Toronto, to the Maple Leafs.

They've also only won just once in their last six games, a slippery stretch that began when they dropped a 3-2 overtime decision to the Senators in Dallas.

The Stars (38-26-7) want to build on the second period in Toronto that saw them pick up the only goals before they were outscored 3-1 in the third.

"We need to find more consistency," said a frustrated Tyler Seguin, who had three points against the Leafs and scored both goals in the loss to the Senators. "We've got 10 games left, 11 games left. ... I don't know."

"The leaders have got to talk about it. We know the way we can play, but we seem to always want to play to be that team. ... It's a broken record right now. We need to find some results right now."

The Senators (25-33-11) are coming off back-to-back road victories in Florida, where each member of the first line -- Matt Duchene, Ryan Dzingel and Mike Hoffman -- hit the 20-goal plateau. Captain Erik Karlsson also continued a hot streak that sees him with 12 points in his last eight games and, with 54 points, just three off the league lead for blue liners.

For Ottawa, the games now are about proving a point for the future.

"There's a lot of guys in that room that want jobs and they want to stay," coach Guy Boucher said after Thursday's practice. "Even some guys with contracts, whose names came up, they want to make sure that their names don't come up anymore.

"We've got to know where we're going and that's why all these games are so important. We've got to make some decisions here and we've got to know what we want to grow here. The guys have got to fit the culture."

One of those players is defenseman Chris Wideman, who has been out since Nov. 16 when Pittsburgh Penguins' Evgeni Malkin fell on him and tore his hamstring. Wideman is eligible to become an unrestricted free agent July 1 and he's determined to play again before the season ends.

"I saw the doctors on Monday and they figured I'm probably a moth to (six weeks) ahead of where they expected me to be," Wideman said Thursday. "I'm going to try. I've put in so many hours of work on the ice and the gym with the trainers. It's really my goal to play. If I have the clearance from doctors, I'm going to play, 100 percent."