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Senators Struck By Bishop, Lightning |
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Hockey is a game of mistakes. Sometimes they end up in the back of your net, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes you can capitalize on more of your opponents mistakes and there are nights where no matter how hard you try it isn't going to happen.
Such was the case Thursday night in Tampa for the Ottawa Senators. Getting through a first period where they took control of most of the play seemed inevitable until the brain cramps started.
First, Mark Borowiecki's ill-timed hook in the neutral zone. Ill-timed because it was nowhere near the play and it was trying to take the lazy way out. Ill-timed because at the same time Chris Wideman was also taking a penalty a few feet away. Both were called and the result was a full 2 minute 5-on-3.
Just when it looked like the Senators were going to get out of it unscathed, Jean-Gabriel Pageau had a huge misplay where he blocked a shot and broke away, but instead of just dumping it in behind Ben Bishop with less than 13 seconds left, he inexplicably turned around at the Tampa blue line and turned it over, resulting in a 4 on 2 rush led by one of the most dangerous players in the game. Steven Stamkos found Nikita Kucherov in the slot and he wired a slapshot past Craig Anderson for the opening goal of the game with just 8 seconds left.
No worries, the Senators have come back from deficits many times in the last few weeks, and it was just 1 goal, a deficit they managed to maintain through the second period. Then another miscue, this time on a backcheck by Mike Hoffman where he got caught watching the puck along the boards instead of taking his man, Valtteri Filppula, who promptly put the rebound past Anderson to double the lead. A tough time for such a glaring error to happen for Hoffman, whose defensive awareness came into question during Tuesday's game against the Panthers.
And finally, Jared Cowen, who has been fairly decent without the puck but absolutely dreadful with it of late, fumbled a puck along the boards and then missed both the puck and the player allowing Kucherov to walk in alone and get two cracks at beating Anderson, the second of which was successful for his second of the game.
Cody Ceci's mid-third period marker made it interesting, and once again the Senators made a valiant effort to come back late, but Bishop was having none of it and turned away all comers, many of them quality scoring chances.
The Bolts held Erik Karlsson off the scoresheet, the third straight game that the captain was held pointless, and perhaps the 32 & 33 minute games on back to back nights on the weekend are catching up with him a little bit. He played a more reasonable 27ish minutes, but after the score got to 3-0 I might have sat him down for the last 10 minutes or so just to give him a breather. Instead, he played almost 6 1/2 of the last 10 minutes.
It was just one of those games where the mistakes hurt more than usual, and Anderson couldn't bail out his team. On the whole I don't think there is much you can really complain about, because for the most part it was a pretty solid effort. It was just one of those nights where the mistakes (that happen to every team every game) are magnified because of the end result, and this time they couldn't score their way out of it.
It just shows how much of a fine line the Senators have been walking, and how easily many of the games that ended up as wins could have gone the other way.
Tampa gets full credit for shutting down a usually potent offense and with the reunited triplets line healthy together at the same time they will start to claw their way back into the picture where most people had them pegged before the season starts.
It was a night with a lot of "what if's" and "if only's" for the Senators, and they will get a chance to rectify this one in 10 days time when they make another visit to the Sunshine state.
But for now, and maybe they were somewhat guilty of looking ahead to this one, it is on to Montreal for a Saturday night showdown with the Habs.
Ottawa Senators Blogger • 
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