FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY
Karlsson, Claesson and Oduya come up big in their home country as Ottawa tops Avs
Senators’ Swedes come up big in Stockholm
This victory tasted pretty Swede for the Ottawa Senators.
The Senators crossed the ocean to get here and they’re guaranteed they won’t be going home empty-handed.
Opening a back-to-back series against the Colorado Avalanche at the Ericsson Globe, the Senators scored a 4-3 overtime victory in front of a sellout crowd of 13,396 on Friday, but they did it the hard way, allowing a thirdperiod lead to slip away before Mark Stone scored the winner, his second of the game.
But this night will be remembered because the club’s three Swedish players — captain Erik Karlsson along with fellow defencemen Fredrik Claesson and Johnny Oduya — chipped in with four points.
All had plenty of family and friends in the stands and Claesson had a huge celebration when he got the Senators on the board with a first-period goal. Chris DiDomenico also scored for Ottawa. Nathan MacKinnon, Alex Kerfoot and Nail Yakupov scored for the Avalanche.
Karlsson had two assists on a night that started with Swedish legend Peter Forsberg dropping the puck at centre ice.
“If you add this all up, this was an all-Swedish night and I thought it was one of those games where we were good defensively,” said coach Guy Boucher. “I liked the way we reacted when they scored and we just got it back later.”
This felt good for Claesson, who grew up in Stockholm and has played a lot of hockey in the Ericsson Globe with Djurgarden.
“It was really nice. It felt unbelievable and hopefully I can do it tomorrow again,” said Claesson with a wide smile. “It was especially fun in front of family and friends.”
While there was plenty of talk about the Senators debut of newly acquired centre Matt Duchene, he looked as if he was still trying to get comfortable, but in the end he was on the right side of the scoreboard against his former team.
“It wasn’t as overwhelming as I thought,” said Duchene. “It kind of felt like one of our burgundy and white (Avalanche intrasquad) games, but I didn’t have any burgundy or white on my team. It was outstanding. It was nice to get that first one out of the way and get the win.”
Goaltender Craig Anderson, who spent part of his career with the Avalanche before being dealt to Ottawa in 2010-11, came up big when needed. His counterpart Semyon Varlamov halted JeanGabriel Pageau on a breakaway and kept Colorado in the game.
MacKinnon tied it up 3-3 at 12:53 of the third period, when he actually missed the shot, but the puck still slid behind Anderson. Up until then, the Senators had completed outplayed the Avs.
This game had just about everything.
The Senators led 3-2 after 40 minutes with Anderson deserving at least some of the credit after he got a piece of a penalty shot awarded to Matt Nieto, who had received a two-handed slash from Ottawa defenceman Chris Wideman while in alone on the goal. Karlsson wasn’t happy because he helped set up Nieto’s breakaway.
“I wasn’t happy at all,” said Karlsson. “It’s going to happen and it’s frustrating sometimes, but when mistakes do happen with the group that we have we do everything we can to help each other out. Andy made a good stop there and he played great for us the entire game. That’s something we need today.”
DiDomenico, trying to secure a spot on the Senators’ roster after being called up from Belleville of the American Hockey League, did a lot of scoring during his long stint in Europe, so it was only appropriate he capitalized on a rebound to beat Varlamov at 13:21 of the second period, putting the Senators up 3-2.
The Avalanche had tied the score 2-2 when Kerfoot tipped Blake Comeau’s point shot by Anderson at 9:41.
The Senators didn’t look very good for the first few minutes of the contest and even gave up the opening goal, but still held a 2-1 advantage after 20 minutes.
Stone, who has played like a man on a mission all season, scored his 10th goal at 15:10 to put his club ahead 2-1, redirecting an Oduya shot past Varlamov. He did a good job going to the front of the net.
Only 20 seconds after the Avalanche opened the scoring, Claesson tied it up 1-1 with a shot that was deflected on its way past Varlamov. Claesson had told reporters previously that he designed his spirited goal celebration at the Globe and he got to use it at 8:36.
The Avalanche had opened the scoring on a power play at 8:16, when Yakupov beat Anderson with a shot from the slot.
“The first five or 10 minutes didn’t feel like a normal NHL game, but once you realized you were playing another NHL team that was in the same situation, we started to settle in and we really dictated the play. We could have gotten up by more than one goal,” said Stone.
Good start for the Senators, but now they have to finish it off in Game 2 Saturday.