A three-goal second period lifts St. Louis to victory
Same old, same old.
The Ottawa Senators returned from their week-long bye week Thursday by offering their Canadian Tire Centre fans something they saw far too often in the first half of the season — a second period meltdown.
The St. Louis Blues overpowered the Senators in the middle of the game, taking away the game en route to a 4-1 victory.
Vladimir Tarasenko, Alex Pietrangelo, Brayden Schenn and Alex Steen — into an empty net — scored for the Blues, who had 37 shots on goal.
Bobby Ryan, who has scored 19 goals and 14 assists in 27 career games against the Blues, scored the lone Senators goal against St. Louis netminder Carter Hutton.
“This is a disease,” Senators coach Guy Boucher said of the re-occurrence of the second period problems.
“We stop shooting. We get perimeter play. We get east-west play. We get complicated plays. When you don’t have a shooter’s mentality, you can’t create momentum. So, it’s a disease we’ve got to get rid of.”
Much of the enthusiasm stemming from the Senators’ 3-1-1 record before the break has disappeared in the face of the latest effort.
The biggest worry for the Senators going into the game was how they would handle the first period after being away from game action for a week. Turns out, they handled that just fine.
The problem was — where have we seen this before? — the second-period collapse.
For the season, the Senators have now been outscored by a ridiculous 65-36 margin in the second period. In the second period Thursday, the Blues outscored the Senators 3-1 and held a 19-6 edge in shots.
After a scoreless first period, Tarasenko broke the ice 6:13 into the second, deflecting Robert Bortuzzo’s shot past Senators goaltender Craig Anderson after Johnny Oduya lost a battle for the puck down low.
Pietrangelo took advantage of a huge Anderson rebound to pad the lead to 2-0 and Schenn slipped a shot between the legs of the Senators’ goaltender to extend the margin to 3-0 with 3:07 left in the period.
The only highlight was the Ryan goal 28 seconds after Schenn’s goal.
“It’s frustrating,” Anderson said. “We all want to play better in the second, but that’s kind of the way the game went and we put ourselves in that hole.”
He shook his head when asked about why it’s happening over and over again.
“It’s just one of those things that when you lose the momentum, it’s tough to get it back.”
Battling back against the Blues is almost an impossible task, given the fact they possess arguably the best defence in the NHL. Trying to enter the Blues blue line is like trying to penetrate a giant fence.
The Blues are now 21-0-1 when leading after two periods. The Senators have rallied for victory only four times after facing a deficit to start the third period.
Taken altogether, there was a whole lot of déjà vu associated with the defeat.
The loss also pushes Senators general manager Pierre Dorion one step closer toward making significant changes.
The puck dropped about two hours after Dorion’s state of the union address, in which he said he wasn’t ready to give up on a playoff berth just yet.
He is realistic, recognizing that unless the club makes up major ground in a hurry — the Senators entered the game seven teams and 12 points out of a post-season spot — it will be time to think about the future.
The Blues, on the other hand, have plans to make noise in the playoffs.
They came out of their bye week by defeating the Toronto Maple Leafs 2-1 in overtime on Tuesday, ending a three-game losing streak and cementing their hold on third spot in the Central Division.
The Senators didn’t test Hutton often, but needed to be sharp in the opening moments, when Ottawa had some jump.
Boucher came into the game worried about how his club would respond to being away from game action for so long.
Mark Borowiecki, out of the lineup since Nov. 19 due to a concussion, announced his presence with authority — smacking Patrik Berglund into the end boards two minutes in.
“I was just trying to get back in the saddle there, doing what I do best,” Borowiecki said.
He was also involved in a second period fight with Chris Thorburn and acknowledged that the Blues’ Kyle Brodziak bit his finger during a scrum.
“He did, but it’s not a big deal,” Borowiecki said.
“We were laughing about it after. I was over-selling it a little bit.”
The Senators, already without centre Jean-Gabriel Pageau due to an upper body injury, could need to reach down to Belleville of the AHL for another replacement forward.
Nate Thompson re-aggravated his lower body injury in the second period and didn’t play in the third.