By Ken Hawkins (a.k.a. khawk)
The Senators almost certainly deserved a better fate on Friday, but failed to protect a late 3rd period lead en route to a 6-4 loss to VGK. It was an all-too-familiar story for a team that is still trying to shake a reputation for finding ways to lose. But you have to give credit to Vegas for showing resilience, scoring timely goals, and not giving up on a game in which they were generally outplayed. GM Steve Staios added a few UFA like Amadio, Cousins, and Jensen from teams that have won a Stanley Cup to try to add that kind of resilience, but VGK has that benefit across the majority of their roster. On this night, it showed through.
VGK 6 - OTT 4 (NHL Game Highlights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA_Ts-Aa7Dw/
Despite the obvious disappointment of the outcome, it would be a mistake to ignore the fact that the Senators came out and played an otherwise very strong road game against a Cup-quality opponent. They scored the first goal, held leads in all 3 periods, got production from their 4th line, outshot VGK by a 39-28 margin, had a 20-12 edge in blocked shots, and went physically toe-to-toe with a very tough team. On most nights that should earn you at least 1 point, but they absolutely have to work on finding a way to calm the game down after conceding an emotional goal against.
The Good - The decision to move Giroux to the Norris-Batherson line continues to pay dividends, as both Giroux and Batherson had 1G-1A in this game, and Norris went 13/22 in the faceoff circle. The Tkachuk-Stutzle line also played well, despite having just 1A to go along with a combined 8 shots, 4 hits, and 2 blocked shots. But it was Gaudette who stepped up in this game with his first 2 goals of the season, including an early first goal and what could/would/should have been the GWG.
The Bad - There’s been no shortage of praise for the early-season play of Sanderson, but this was by far his worst game of the season. Now that doesn’t mean he didn’t play over 25min with 2 hits and 3 blocked shots, but finishing with a -4 rating in a game where your team scored 4 goals is something of an achievement. In fairness, they’ve been playing Hamonic over his head on the top-D pairing, and this was maybe the first road game where it’s caught up with them, and a high-quality team was able to take advantage with difficult match-ups.
The Ugly - It would be easy to throw Ullmark under the bus, because a stat line of 5.15 GAA and 0.815sv% is not what you expect from a top-10 NHL goaltender. To Ullmark’s credit, he’s openly shouldered the blame for this loss (see link below), but a closer look reveals multiple learning opportunities for the rest of the team. For instance, the Cousins penalty in the 3rd period was just unacceptable, and then you have the inexplicable odd-man rush they allowed just seconds after giving up a critical game-tying goal. In fact, VGK scored 2G that were less than 1 minute apart on two different occasions, which means it’s back to the chalkboard in terms of learning how to cope with momentum swings.
Ullmark Post-Game Interview (TSN)
https://www.tsn.ca/nhl/video/pissed-off-ullmark-rips-his-own-play-if-we-had-a-capable-goalie-~3009043/
The loss drops the Senators to a 4-3-0 record on the season, with just one more game remaining on their road trip. Sunday night will have them match up vs. another recent Cup-winning team in the Colorado Avalanche. Early on it looked like COL might be having a rough start to the year, but they’ve now won 4-straight and will be looking to improve upon their 1-3-0 home record. MacKinnon, Rantanen, and Makar are also all in the top-5 of league scoring, so they will need a far better performance from both their top-D pairing and goaltender if they expect to come away with points.
What are your thoughts on the Senators’ loss in Las Vegas? Please leave your comments below, and as always thanks for reading!
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