Panthers come back to drop Senators in Florida
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA For the Ottawa Senators on Friday night, the BB&T Center stood for Bad Bad Turnovers.
As brilliant as Senators goaltender Craig Anderson was in trying to keep his team alive, it was only a matter of time before the Florida Panthers finally took advantage of the giveaway and odd-man rush gifts en route to a 3-2 victory.
Jimmy Hayes broke a 2-2 tie at the 7:31 mark of the third period, beating Erik Karlsson to the net and taking a pass from Vincent Trocheck, who had fought off a check from Jared Cowen to make the play.
Karlsson, who was shaky defensively all night, also lost a pair of puck battles leading directly to Sean Bergenheim’s tying goal 34 seconds into the final period.
As was the case in Anderson’s last start, a 4-3 loss to Detroit on Monday, the only reason the Senators were even in the game was due to their goaltender. The final shot count was 46-24. “I feel pretty damned embarrassed right now after that effort we put out there,” said Anderson. “Looking at this game, I guess St. Louis (a 3-2 victory Tuesday) was a decade ago. Two completely different teams.”
Kyle Turris called it “terrible from the drop of the puck to the finish.”
Chris Neil couldn’t explain why the Senators offered up such an awful performance, leaving their goaltender to fend for himself.
“You can’t ask him to save breakaway after breakaway, and odd man rushes and you name it,” said Neil. “Everything they threw at him was a good scoring chance.”
Panthers goaltender Al Montoya, subbing for the injured Roberto Luongo, wasn’t tested often, but he came up big when he needed to.
His biggest stop of the night came off Clarke MacArthur with 6:49 remaining, sticking out his trapper after MacArthur found some open space in front of the net.
Before the third period, it was all about Anderson, who came into the game with a career record of 11-21 and a 1.93 goals-against average against Florida.
Friday’s game marked the midpoint of the five-game, 10-day road trip, following a loss in Detroit Monday and the 3-2 win in St. Louis on Tuesday.
The Senators were scheduled to fly from Florida’s Atlantic coast to its Gulf coast immediately following the game and will be back in action again Saturday versus the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The 10-day trip will end following Tuesday’s game against the New York Islanders. The Senators will return to the Canadian Tire Centre against those same Islanders for Daniel Alfredsson’s retirement party next Thursday.
There was no reason to celebrate Friday.
The Panthers outshot the Senators 16-9 in the second period, but that was misleading. At least half of Florida’s 16 shots were fantastic scoring chances.
Anderson’s second period began with him stopping a pair of breakaways while the Senators were on a power play.
Seconds after the power play expired, the Senators took advantage of a lucky bounce to take a 2-1 lead.
Neil’s attempted shot deflected off a leg directly to Cody Ceci, who beat Montoya to the short side.
The ice was tilted for the remainder of the period. The Senators were guilty of bad giveaways, poor defensive zone coverage and bad line changes.
The defensive pairing of Karlsson and Chris Phillips had a particularly rough night. At one point, both left for a line change at the same time, allowing Jonathan Huberdeau a free path to the Senators’ net from the far side of the centre line. Anderson stoned Huberdeau with a trapper save.
Anderson also made back-toback point-blank saves on Brad Boyes and Bergenheim attempts when the Panthers again snuck behind the Senators’ defence.
On and on it went, with Anderson robbing the Panthers left and right.
In the past couple of weeks, Anderson has repeatedly talked about the importance of maintaining momentum. In particular, he has said the Senators need to improve at keeping control of the game in the moments after they score.
But again Friday, they immediately allowed the Panthers back into the game after taking an early lead.
After Neil opened the scoring at 5:04, the Panthers’ Dylan Olsen replied only 47 seconds later.
The Senators were guilty of sloppy defensive zone play, allowing the Panthers to keep the play alive several times. Olsen’s shot appeared to deflect off Chris Phillips and past Anderson.
Seconds later, Anderson kept the game deadlocked 1-1, bailing out Patrick Wiercioch after the Senators defenceman fell down while trying to clear the puck from the slot. Anderson’s sharp trapper save came off Vincent Trocheck.