Staying healthy the main focus for Sens' Chychrun this off-season

Jakob Chychrun is looking forward to hopefully having a "normal" NHL season this year.

The 25-year-old defenceman has spent the majority of his career dealing with injuries to his wrist, knee, ankle, and shoulder, and was also the subject of constant trade speculation over the past two seasons while with the Arizona Coyotes.

Chychrun first requested a trade from the Coyotes during the 2021-22 season. The team finally acted by making him a healthy scratch for three weeks prior to the trade deadline before trading him to the Ottawa Senators in exchange for three draft picks on March 1.

He got his feet wet with the Senators last season by appearing in 12 games, registering two goals and five points before the team missed the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season.

Chychrun told TSN1200 on Friday that he is coming into training camp fully healthy and is looking forward to having a fresh start with his new club.

"It's going to feel like another fresh start with the group, to have a true training camp and pre-season with the guys," Chychrun said. "All the guys are thrilled with the potential we have in this room and we're really hungry to make a push for the postseason next year. We're a motivated team and I'm really excited to have a true fresh start with this group starting in training camp."

Chychrun has never played more than 68 games in his seven-season career, so the left-shot defenceman spent this off-season with the goal of finding a way to stay healthy.

The Boca Raton, Fla., native spent the majority of the off-season in Toronto working with his training team, looking for a new way of thinking in order to make himself available to the Senators for an 82-game season.

"The summer was about finding something new," explained Chychrun. "Obviously, I haven't stayed as healthy as I wanted to the last two seasons, and the big thing I wanted to address was to see if I could do something different. "I've always done the same thing every summer. It was always about lifting, getting strong, and putting on size. [But], I think I'm at the point where that isn't the main thing that needed to be addressed this summer.

"My whole life I really enjoyed working out, training, and working hard, so I think it's tough to sit back and look at it from a different perspective where you have to realize that might not be what's best for you personally [right now]. I learned so much about the body from everything I've gone through. It's knowledge I never wanted to be forced into learning, but since I have, I just took it and turned it into a new positive way into going about things."

Due to how late in the season Chychrun was acquired by the Senators, he didn't have much time to get acquainted with his new club. The Sens also enter this season with a glut of young left-shot defenceman between Chychrun, Thomas Chabot, Jake Sanderson, and Erik Brannstrom, so there are questions as to how each will fit in with the defence core.

Chychrun believes that too much is made of that aspect of the team at the NHL level.

"At the end of the day, it's the NHL and we have guys who are very talented players," explained Chychrun. "I don't think it's as big of a concern as people make it out to be. These guys all play very similarly, and they want to take time and space away from the other team's players. They [also] want to have the puck, jump in on the play and be creative. That creative side of how we play will naturally have us playing on opposite sides of the ice.

"This is just going to be part of the process [but] we have guys who are talented enough that they could probably play forward if we needed them to."