SENATORS COME UP JUST SHORT
Ottawa scores only moral victory on road in Tampa, losing 4-3 in skills competition
Needing much more than a moral victory, the Ottawa Senators hung with the best team in the NHL for three periods and overtime on Thursday night.
Ultimately, they picked up a point. And a moral victory.
Brayden Point and Steven Stamkos scored in the shootout while Tom Pyatt and Matt Duchene came up empty as the Senators dropped a 4-3 decision to the Tampa Bay Lightning in an outcome decided by a skills contest at Amalie Arena.
It was a good bounce-back game for the Senators, who choked away a 3-1 lead in Tuesday’s loss to the Minnesota Wild. But in entering the night 10 points from a playoff spot, they needed more.
“We played a fairly good game, I don’t think we played poorly,” said dissatisfied captain Erik Karlsson. “I think that once we get the leads, we get a little too passive and give them a little too much room. If you give a team like this too much room, they’re going to make the plays they’re making.
“At the end of the day, it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good.”
But at least it was something for the Senators to build on when they visit the Florida Panthers on Saturday in their final game before Christmas.
The Senators broke a 2-2 tie at 5:59 of the third period, on the power play no less, when Karlsson took a point shot that Derick Brassard tipped past Andrei Vasilevskiy.
But with 8:55 left in regulation, the Lightning tied it up.
Breaking in down the right wing, Nikita Kucherov slid a cross-slot pass to Victor Hedman, who took a shot that was stopped magnificently by Craig Anderson. Nobody picked up Vladislav Namestnikov, who skated to the crease to put in the rebound.
The Senators, among the league leaders in too-many-men penalties, took another with 1:08 left in overtime. Anderson made a great save off Kucherov a couple of seconds before the extra session ended.
Bobby Ryan and Cody Ceci scored the other Senators goals, while Anderson made 35 saves in an exceptional performance.
Ryan, who appeared to suffer yet another hand injury early in the game, returned in the second. But he only took one shift in the third before exiting for the night.
Coach Guy Boucher confirmed Ryan injured a finger, but said he did not break it. Boucher isn’t sure when Ryan will be able to play.
Tyler Johnson and Yanni Gourde had the other Tampa goals. Vasilevskiy stopped 18 shots in regulation and was not tested in OT.
“I think it’s character showing for us,” Anderson said. “The way we battled and gave ourselves a chance tonight. I thought we had everyone on board for all 65 minutes.
“It’s a crapshoot in the shootout. You never know.”
Surprisingly for a tight game, the third period featured a fight, with Ben Harpur and J.T. Brown dropping the gloves 6:35 from the buzzer.
The Senators were pretty creative from the beginning. About 3½ minutes in, Ryan was skating behind the Tampa net when he slipped a backhand pass out front that seemed to fool Mark Stone as it slid right by him. Duchene was there, however, but his shot from the slot hit the post and went up into the crowd.
Duchene, snake-bitten since Day 1 as a Senator, showed his frustration.
Ryan opened the scoring on a gift from the Tampa defence at 6:31 of the first.
Sent in alone on a slick pass from Karlsson, Ryan deked to his backhand before flipping a shot Vasilevskiy beautifully stopped. With the puck falling in front, Dan Girardi tried to clear it but his shot went off the shin pad of blue-line mate Braydon Coburn and into the net.
The goal was Ryan’s fourth of the season and third in the last five games.
Meanwhile, Karlsson looked like he was enjoying himself throughout the opening period. His list of passes included another nice setup Brassard was unable to convert, a daring pass by a couple of Lightning sticks to a teammate standing only a few feet from Anderson, and a neutral zone completion he sent with a backhander between his own skates.
The Senators have yet to score a five-on-three power play this season, blowing a 20-second twoman opportunity late in the first.
Johnson tied the score for the Lightning at 11:59 of the second and it, too, was a fluky one. A shot by Kucherov changed directions a couple times, first deflecting off Stone, then going off Johnson.
Celebrating his 24th birthday, Ceci put the Senators back in front less than three minutes later. After taking a pass from Brassard, he pulled the puck to his backhand and hesitated just enough to allow Vasilevskiy to commit, giving Ceci the upper part of the net for his fifth of the season.
“We obviously wanted the win tonight, but getting the point in a game like this is huge,” Ceci said. “They’re a great team. It would have been nice to get two, but we battled hard tonight.”
The Senators’ lead lasted all of one minute and 16 seconds. Freddy Claesson, who also drew an assist on the Ceci goal, had a clearing attempt knocked down by Alex Killorn near the Ottawa blue line. Killorn took a couple of strides in and let a shot go from near the top of the right wing circle that grazed off Anderson’s glove and bounced off the back boards. The puck came out the other side, where former Senator Cory Conacher picked it up and slid it along the goal-line for Gourde to tip in.