Senators coach will be shocked if Hammond plays more than Anderson this season

Dave Cameron sees the veteran outplaying the upstart in the Ottawa Senators' net this season.

While Andrew Hammond took hold of the starting job down the stretch during the regular season, Craig Anderson who was the last man standing as the Senators were eliminated from the playoffs. Cameron is big on using two goalies with regularity, but it's the latter who he expects to earn the lion's share of playing time in 2015-16.

"I'm not big on No. 1," Cameron told Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun. "I know you need two goalies, but I'll be shocked if Anderson doesn't play more games than Hammond this year. I'll be really shocked.

"You need two goalies, you need healthy competition among the goalies, you need the goalies definitely to push one another."

Cameron also sees the need to curb expectations in terms of Hammond coming close to replicating his breakthrough performance last spring.

"He's a kid coming in that should be feeling pretty good about what he did last year but I think his personality is such that I don't think he's going to get ahead of himself," the coach said of Hammond.

"I think he realized he did well but he also knows this is the best league in the world and his sample size is small," Cameron added. "He looks good from what I've seen and he's going to come in and accept the challenge of being a regular NHL goalie."

Based on experience and contract size, Anderson should carry the bulk of the workload, with Hammond - who has his own reined-in expectations - reverting from hero to backup.