On a night the Ottawa Senators inducted their winningest coach in franchise history into their Ring of Honour, it was the Carolina Hurricanes who played Jacques Martin hockey to perfection. The Canes upended the Senators 4-1 at the Canadian Tire Centre.
Outshot 14-7 in the opening period, the Hurricanes took advantage of a pair of Senators’ neutral zone missed assignments to lead 3-0 after 20 minutes.
The remainder of the game saw Carolina limit Ottawa’s scoring chances despite the Senators outshooting them 22-12 over the final two periods. The Hurricanes defended well, and the Senators couldn’t one past one of the league’s hottest goaltenders, Brandon Bussi with the exception of Tim Stützle. Bussi’s season continues to astonish, posting a record of 19-3-1 after the Hurricanes latest win.
Carrying the play?
While there may have been a differing of opinions, especially if one was tuning into the Senators postgame show on TSN1200 as this scribe did on my drive home, Senators head coach Travis Green wasn’t completely speaking out of turn that his team carried the play. Ottawa limited Carolina to 19 shots on goal. The final tally was 36-19 in favour of the Senators. Total shot attempts were 61-44, Ottawa.
“They’re a good team for sure. I think we carried a lot of the play tonight. I thought we gifted them two goals, the first goal and third goal, on routine plays for us that are usually a strength of ours. I thought there were mental mistakes. It’s usually our strength, our neutral zone play. They got a lucky goal and a five-on- three goal. They’re too good a team to get two goals, and their goalie is playing well. If that was going to be a win, both teams played well, it’s probably gonna end 2-1, 3-2 something like that,” said the Senators head coach postgame Saturday.
The fact is, while the Senators appeared to carry possesion the majority of the evening, high danger scoring opportunites were equal at even-strength, 7-7 and 2-2 on special teams.
Running out of race track?
With 31 games remaining in the season, are the Senators running out of time to earn a postseason berth?
Heading into Sunday’s game versus the Vegas Golden Knights, Ottawa trails the final Eastern Conference Wildcard spot currently held by the Boston Bruins by nine points. The Senators hold one game in hand.
if you follow Micah McCurdy’s Hockey Viz, the cutoff to make the playoffs is 92 points. The Senators need to play at .629 clip the rest of the way to do so. However, there are seven teams to leap who are in a similar situation.
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Who starts Sunday?
With the recall of Mads Sogaard from Belleville prior to Saturday’s game, it’s anyone’s guess to which goalie gets the call to start Sunday? Due to an impending snow event in the Springfield, MA area where the “BSens” were playing Saturday, the Senators were permitted to recall Sogaard under emergency conditions.
James Reimer remains a possibility to start in back-to-back games as he wasn’t tested much. Hunter Shepard is still in Ottawa, and then there’s the status of Linus Ullmark. Ullmark has been practising with the club. Green said he was “close” to returning to the fold Saturday morning. We may not know until Green makes his availability Sunday afternoon to who is between the pipes Sunday.
