Senators tops in Basement Bowl
Victory ensures Sabres will finish last overall, but draft order will be crucial
SENATORS 4, SABRES 2
The Ottawa Senators picked up the victory in the Basement Bowl, but the real winner won’t be determined for another three weeks
While the Senators’ 4-2 victory Wednesday night at the KeyBank Center assured the Buffalo Sabres will finish last overall in the NHL, what really counts will be the order of the draft lottery which will be determined April 28 at the CBC studios in Toronto.
While the Sabres now have the best odds of landing the No. 1 overall pick with an 18.5 per cent chance of winning the lottery, the Senators are ranked right behind them in 30th overall. With two games left, there’s strong chance that’s where they’ll stay, which would give Ottawa a 13.5 per cent opportunity to draft top-ranked Swedish defenceman Rasmus Dahlin.
Of course, there was a portion of the fan base that wanted the Senators to finish last overall. But the players ignored the noise happening outside the rink to end a three-game road-losing streak, which was also only their second victory in the last 10 games.
Ryan Dzingel, Matt Duchene and Max McCormick did the scoring against Buffalo goalie Chad Johnson and Alex Burrows clinched the win with an emptynet goal. Only Kyle Okposo and Ryan O’Reilly were able to beat Ottawa’s Craig Anderson. The Senators finished the season with a 2-1-1 record against the Sabres.
The Senators spent the third period holding onto a one-goal lead as the Sabres pressed desperately to try to send this one to overtime until Burrows salted it away.
Ottawa finished the game without winger Bobby Ryan. He left with a lower-body injury he may have suffered in a collision with Jean- Gabriel Pageau in the first. Pageau was hit by Jack Eichel and took out Ryan’s legs while going down.
Ryan went to the dressing room after the collision, returned for one shift and didn’t play again. The Senators may have not to recall anybody because winger Mark Stone may be close to making his return from a leg injury.
Coming off a 6-5 home loss to the Winnipeg Jets on Monday night, the Senators were hoping to kick off this final trip with a victory.
“We want to win the game because we felt if we had one or two less turnovers, we could have won against Winnipeg,” coach Guy Boucher said Wednesday morning. “We want to be a bit better than we were in the last game.
“We did a lot of good things (vs. the Jets) but defensively, I thought we weren’t very good and when I looked at the video afterwards I thought 90 per cent of the problems occurred because we turned it over in our zone. What we’re looking at is turning the puck over less in our zone. I thought we were better offensively and we’ve got to keep that going.”
The Senators didn’t get off to a great start in this game, but they got their act together in the second period and pulled out to a 3-2 lead.
Ottawa looked like it was in control until Okposo pulled the Sabres to within a goal at 16:41 of the second. Anderson didn’t have much of a chance on the shot with traffic in front, but up to that point the Senators had completely outplayed the Sabres.
In fact, Buffalo had no business being in the game and only was because Johnson was there to make the stops when needed as Ottawa outshot the Sabres by a 14-7 count in the second.
The Senators pulled out to a 3-1 lead at 3:21 of the second when Dzingel had all day at the top of the circle to beat Johnson high on the stick side. It’s hard to fathom why the Senators have been so bad this season, but the Sabres didn’t look very good defensively on that play.
While the Senators were outshot 14-10 and gave up some great scoring chances to force Anderson to come up with some big saves, they held a 2-1 lead over the Sabres after the first.
Duchene, who has been a bright spot the last three months, scored his 27th of the season when he fired it by Johnson on the stick side from the top of the slot at 6:10 to give the Senators a 2-1 lead. Duchene is now closing in on his career-high 30 goals he had in 2015-16 with Colorado.
Trailing 1-0, the Senators got a goal from an unlikely source when McCormick tied it up at 2:56. He scored his third of the season by tipping a shot by Mark Borowiecki from the point by Johnson that beat him on the sticks side.
Only 30 seconds into the game, the Senators found themselves trailing when O’Reilly took a pass, skated in alone with three Ottawa players chasing and beat Anderson on the glove side.
He had no chance on that one and the fact O’Reilly had such a great opportunity just summed up the season.
The Senators face the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday night at PPG Paints Arena and close out the season Saturday against the Boston Bruins at TD Garden.
What we’re looking at is turning the puck over less in our zone. I thought we were better offensively.