A Tired Sens Team Gives Up Two Points To the Bolts

The Sens have been rolling with a 5-game winning streak and their confidence has never been higher. Tonight's game though was the beginning of some very important implications on their playoff chances. Coming off a great win against the Predators last night, the Sens quickly had to turn around and focus on a crucial divisional game.

With Linus Ullmark finally back, the Bolts wanted to test him early and frequently. It didn't seem like Ullmark was minding the traffic too much. As expected, the Sens looked tired and slow, having no shots in the first 5 minutes of the period.

The Bolts knew they needed to take advantage and were flying even forcing Chabot to take a desperate penalty. The Sens managed to kill the penalty but they kept coming and they even got the puck in the net. Luckily for the Sens, it was after the whistle and it was immediately waved off.

A concerning start to the period for more worrisome as Shane Pinto took a big hit into the boards; he left immediately looking in extreme discomfort. With Josh Norris already out a few weeks, losing Pinto would be really bad.

Still struggling to get going, the Sens get an opportunity to get some momentum with 7 minutes left with a power play. The power play was the complete opposite of how the Sens had played all period, it was organized with good movement and they got rewarded with the opening goal from Amadio making 4 straight games for the Sens with a power play goal.

The second period came and brought with it some bad news. It didn't take long for the Bolts to tie the game and gain back some momentum including an early-period power play which the Sens thankfully killed off.

The bad news kept coming as the team announced that Shane Pinto was done for the night with an upper-body injury. Zack Ostapchuk, the stage is all yours.

The Sens were playing a dangerous game giving the Bolts another power play; this time they didn't miss taking a 2-1 lead to deflate an already scrambling Sens team. They may have been tired, but these Sens don't give up easily as Claude Giroux doesn't take long to respond with the tying goal!

With his 11th goal of the season Claude Giroux is now on a 6 game point streak🔥 #gosensgo

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— Coming In Hot Podcast (@cominginhot.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 8:51 PM

This was shaping up to be a very stressful game, obviously.

For the second game in the row, Drake Batherson was "falsely accused" of interfering with the goalie. This time, Green didn't challenge and with the amount of power plays the Bolts had, I think it was the smart move.

The third period brought with it the promise of an energized Sens team hopefully taking over the game. Unfortunately, it was quite the opposite. As the Bolts took the lead, the Sens couldn't even muster a shot at net for almost half the period.

The impact of losing Shane Pinto was pretty evident especially with Norris already out. The Bolts simply looked like the more motivated and desperate team. Even though the Sens did end up finding more energy in the third, they could not get anything past Vasilevskiy until late. To be fair, Linus Ullmark was also making his share of fantastic saves.

With less than 4 minutes left, the Sens got the golden opportunity to come back with a power play. They got a few chances and pulled the goalie but ultimately they didn't have much left in the gas and the Bolts sealed the game with an empty netter. Or did they? The Sens would pull Ullmark and Drake Batherson got one back with 80 seconds to go. The Sens made a push to tie it, but it was just a little too late to bring it back.

On the bright side, Ullmark did play well in his first game back and Drake Batherson got a late goal to close up the gap and break the curse of disallowed goals making for an exciting end of the game.

The team didn't necessarily play bad but they just didn't match the energy of the Bolts. I expect a much better showing for the next battle when they aren't playing 17 hours after arriving in the city.

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