ANDERSON TAKES BLAME FOR THIRD-PERIOD GAFFE
Senator calls giveaway late in the game that led to tying goal ‘a horrible read by me’
Craig Anderson took the blame for this one.
Yes, the Ottawa Senators picked up a valuable point to move a step closer to clinching a National Hockey League playoff spot, but they weren’t able to give goalie Anderson a hand after his third-period error sent this game to overtime in what turned out to be a 3-2 shootout loss to the Philadelphia Flyers at the Wells Fargo Center.
Jordan Weal scored the winner in the shootout.
Kyle Turris and Erik Karlsson scored for the Senators on Flyers goalie Steve Mason in regulation, while Weal tied it up after Anderson’s gaffe and Brayden Schenn also chipped in with a goal. The Senators were outshot 35-28.
“It was a horrible read by me and our guys deserve better than that,” a frustrated Anderson said.
With the Senators leading 2-1 and a little more than six minutes remaining, Anderson tried to play the puck behind the net, but instead gave it directly to Weal and had no chance to dive back into position to stop the tying goal. Coach Guy Boucher tried to challenge for goalie interference because the Flyers’ Wayne Simmonds got in Anderson’s way as he tried to get back in position, but there was no way this goal would be overturned.
“It’s too risky. I should know better,” Anderson said.
“The guys worked way too hard, we worked way too well, to burn a point. It’s just learn from it. The guys played outstanding. This one comes down to one play.
“The cloud over us is going to be that play whether we get a point or not. If I could do it over again, I’d do something different. I have to learn from it and go ahead.”
Boucher said the Senators wouldn’t hold what happened against Anderson.
“Everybody was feeling for him. It happens,” Boucher said.
“If there’s no mistake, it stays 2-1 and everybody is happy. We’re not going to look at it as our goalie made this gigantic mistake.
“He gave us a point as well because he played well before that mistake. We’re all behind him. He’s played terrific for us. You can look at it two ways: We lost a point or we gained one, and I’d rather look at it that we’re on the road and we gained one.”
It looked as if the Senators had the two points safely tucked away after Turris took a feed from Cody Ceci and fired the puck by Mason on the glove side with 7:35 left for a 2-1 lead.
“It was just a really frustrating night,” said Turris, who hit the post with a shot in overtime.
“We had tons of missed opportunities. It happens.
“We got something out of it. We did (by getting a point), but it would have been nice to have two.”
The Flyers may be on the verge of being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, but they weren’t about to hand anything to the Senators.
Schenn had tied the game the first time, 1-1 in the opening period, when he tipped a shot by Anderson with the Flyers on a power play at 18:34.
Anderson had made some big stops earlier to allow Ottawa to take the lead, and the Senators did just that with a power-play goal from Karlsson, his 15th of the season, at 16:25. He fired a shot through a crowd that Mason didn’t see.
The Senators also thought they had scored when Ryan Dzingel tipped a shot off the post and followed it up by firing the puck past Mason after Alex Burrows couldn’t convert from the doorstep. However, a video review led to a ruling the net was off its moorings before Dzingel put it home, and there wasn’t much of an argument.
“They’re playing pretty desperate right now. They need wins and we knew they were going to come hard at us. They were coming hard on the forecheck and there were times we had a tough time handling that,” Ceci said. “I thought we played pretty solid.”
The Senators face the Minnesota Wild on Thursday at the Xcel Energy Centre.