Sens blow 3-goal lead vs. Crosby and Pens
Ottawa blows 3-0 lead, allowing five unanswered goals by Crosby’s crew
This Ottawa Senators season can’t end soon enough.
Fortunately for their fans, there’s only one more home game left, Thursday against Florida. The season wraps up in Boston Saturday.
Tuesday’s 5-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins was a case of ugly history repeating itself yet again.
The Penguins stormed all the way back from a 3-0 deficit, with Carl Hagelin finishing off the comeback with both the tying and winning goals against Senators netminder Andrew Hammond in the third period. Sidney Crosby’s iced the game, scoring into an empty net, his second of the game. Crosby, the NHL’s player of the month for March, now has 10 goals and 18 assists in his past 20 games.
“We were playing solid hockey and then we kind of took our foot off the pedal a bit,” said Mike Hoff- man. “Maybe we got comfortable and gave them too many easy goals and they took advantage of it and capitalized on it.”
If the storyline sounds oh-so-familiar, it is.
In the Senators previous home game, against Anaheim on March 26, the Senators blew a 3-0 third period lead before eventually losing 4-3, in overtime.
Once again, the Senators should never have allowed their visitors to get back into the game.
Milestones were everywhere as the Senators built up a 3-0 lead early in the second period against shaky Penguins goaltender Matt Murray.
Erik Karlsson opened the scoring in the first period, banking an attempted pass off Hornqvist’s skate and past Murray. It was Karlsson’s 80th point of the season and 100th goal of his career.
Hoffman scored his 29th and Zack Smith added his 23rd only 1:12 apart early in the second period to give the Senators a commanding 3-0 lead. Ben Harpur registered his first career point on the Hoffman goal. Fredrik Claesson picked up his first point on the Smith goal.
Murray looked shaky on both and the Senators were seemingly well in control of a game where the Penguins didn’t seem all that inspired.
Yet the Penguins didn’t go away. The rally began when Hornqvist scored on the power play — Binghamton call-up Buddy Robinson was in the penalty box — to make it 3-1. Before the second period was out, Crosby jumped on a loose puck which bounced off Karlsson’s skate and buried it behind Hammond, narrowing the Senators lead to 3-2.
Hagelin’s first third period goal came after the picked up his own rebound, following a Hoffman giveaway behind the Senators net.
His winning goal came after a ghastly Karlsson turnover.
With the game deadlocked 3-3, the Senators failed to convert with an extended 5-on-3 manpower advantage, continuing an atrocious stretch on the power play, dating back to the start of March. Hoffman came within a post of scoring his 30th and putting the Senators ahead 4-3.
In the big picture, the game didn’t mean all that much to either team, but don’t tell that to Hammond.
“It’s frustrating, you play to win and losing sucks,” he said. “The fact this is the way our season has gone is a tough pill to swallow and you don’t get used to it. It never gets easier. It feels the same way it did at Game 50 or Game 10. It’s not fun at all.”
The Penguins have locked up a playoff spot, while the Senators are simply playing out the string before the hard analysis next week about what went so wrong.
The teams have been in different leagues since Feb. 2, when the Penguins defeated the Senators 6-5.
While it has been the same sad story for the Senators since Groundhog Day — a 1313-3 record before Tuesday — the Penguins have caught fire.
They’ve been on a 24-6-1 in that span and, after Tuesday’s win, are on a 13-1 run.
The Senators, who began the game without a slew of injured regulars, also lost Bobby Ryan in the third period to an apparent leg injury.