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It’s never easy to go home again. Steve Ott can confirm that fact of life.
He’ll be back in St. Louis, where he spent the previous three seasons, with his new club the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday to face the Blues and admits it isn’t easy butting heads with your old pals.
“It’s always awkward playing your old team that first time,” Ott said. “Like anybody, if it’s a brotherhood where you had their back in the day, or a friendship that you’ll always cherish, you want to be on the good side of the game.”
That being said, Ott still intends to be Ott – that is an annoying, pesky presence – between the boards against his old club.
“I think everybody on that team knows how I play and know what I do and would be disappointed if it didn’t play that way for sure,” Ott said.
Whether knowledge of your subject makes it easier to grate on the nerves of the opposition is something Ott can’t specifically quantify.
“It depends,” he said. “I think when you battle hard, they expect it.
“I had a lot of bad blood with a lot of the St. Louis guys before I got there and they became some of my closest friends I have ever had in the league.”
Regardless, that won’t change his approach on game night.
“I’m definitely going to try and play my way,” Ott said. “There’s going to be definitely no let off. I’m going to play my way and like I said if I didn’t play my way I think they would be disappointed in me, as I would be with myself.
The Drive Is At Five
The Wings come to St. Louis riding a five-game winning streak and feeling good about themselves.
“We’re going to play hard for sure,” Ott said. “We’re going in there and worrying about our team. We’re building something here. It’s coming together.
“When you continue to string wins together and fix things at the same time, that’s the sign of a team that’s building right now.”
Not Justin’s Time?
Don’t expect any lineup changes for the Wings. Left-winger Justin Abdelkader, out the past two games with a lower-body injury, didn’t sound likely to be ready to play Thursday.
“I’m not sure,” Abdelkader admitted after practice Wednesday. “We’ll see. I skated today, had a good skate.”
What that means for his immediate future would appear uncertain.
“I don’t know,” Abdelkader said. “I’ve got to talk to the trainers and kind of go from there. It’s kind of a day-by-day thing.”
The injury first flared up in Detroit’s Oct. 17 home opener against Ottawa and got to the point where it was finally determined to give Abdelkader some down time in order to fix the ailment.
“It was just kind of one things that I thought with some rest I could still play through,” Abdelkader said. “It just came to a point where I needed some time off.”
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