Sens Lose 6-4 to Golden Knights

We won't know whether or not the Ottawa Senators have turned a corner until about the 20-game mark, but one thing's for certain: for good and bad teams alike, there will be some truly depressing nights throughout the season. And despite a good effort against a tough team, this is most definitely a truly depressing night.

After leading for an overwhelming majority of the hockey game, the Ottawa Senators let that elusive fifth win in October slip away in the final three minutes, losing to the Vegas Golden Knights by a 6-4 score.

Ottawa had a much better start tonight than against Utah, with Adam Gaudette receiving a slick feed from Cole Reinhardt, in his second NHL game, from behind the net, and beat Adin Hill to open the scoring.

Ten minutes later, a Nick Jensen point shot was expertly deflected through Hill's five-hole by Claude Giroux to double Ottawa's lead.

Ottawa had been dominating up until that point, but following a Jensen puck-over-glass penalty, Vegas established an increased presence in the Sens' end, culminating with them tying the game in short order – Nicolas Roy found a hole in Ottawa's coverage with plenty of time and space to beat Linus Ullmark, and shortly after, a point shot from Nicolas Hague which was going several feet wide deflected into the net off Jake Sanderson.

Determined to stop the bleeding and inflict some damage back onto the Knights, Drake Batherson sent Tim Stützle down the wing, and a forced turnover found its way onto the stick of the former, to give Ottawa the lead again.

The remaining 40 minutes, for the most part, saw Ottawa as the better team. Although Ivan Barbashev tied the game for Vegas 6:40 into the second period, an aggressive penalty kill by the Knights ended up backfiring, and Gaudette made no mistake in converting on an ensuing 3-on-2, for his second of the game to put the Sens up 4-3.

They actually wound up increasing the offensive pressure even further in the third period, but couldn't get an insurance marker, which came back to haunt them late in the third. With Nick Cousins in the box for a foolish interference penalty, an Ottawa-esque tic-tac-toe play was finished by Tomas Hertl to tie the game at 4.

And as we all know, the Ottawa Senators aren't allowed to get loser points, so Keegan Kolesar's game-winning goal on a 3-on-2 rush came with just 2:11 remaining in regulation. Barbashev added an empty-netter and there's your 6-4 final score. What had been so promising for so long turned into a disappointing regulation loss.

Game Notes:

• Ullmark might've been Ottawa's worst performer tonight, which isn't a concern since you know he's going to be better in most of the games he plays. He wasn't awful, but neither was anybody else. Yeah, Cousins taking an untimely penalty and Mike Amadio losing his balance and man in the process were bad, but those are single, isolated events. Ullmark made some key saves to protect the lead including an Alex Holtz breakaway attempt, and was beaten mostly by high-danger chances and a bad bounce, but I can't justify defending him further than that with an .815 save percentage on a mere 27 shots allowed. Goalies, after all, can occasionally stop high-danger chances, and Hill did a slightly better job tonight.
• It's a shame no standings points were earned off a strong performance from Cole Reinhardt and Adam Gaudette. They finished 2nd and 5th on the team in 5-on-5 expected goals, and both found the scoresheet. In particular, Gaudette's two-goal game brings him to 3 in 6 games on the year.
• Claude Giroux showed tremendous two-way ability tonight, what with his 2-0 deflection, while also breaking up numerous potential chances for Vegas both at even strength and on the penalty kill. He's back up at a point-per-game pace after a rough first two games.
• Last season, I lost brain cells watching Travis Hamonic play hockey, and this season, I'm losing brain cells watching people complain about him despite being nowhere near as big of a liability this time around. I'm still not big on the idea of him partnering with Tyler Kleven long-term, as the latter has had better numbers when paired with Jacob Bernard-Docker (whose play also hasn't hurt the team as much as in the past). That said, as a replacement for the injured Artem Zub, there hasn't been a ton to complain about not.
• A big test for Travis Green's squad will be how they carry themselves going into the next game against the Colorado Avalanche. A similar effort level with just a little more execution (and some saves) will give them a chance to close out the road trip with a win, so long as they can put tonight's loss behind them.
• It’s a long season, folks.
• By the way, that game is taking place on Sunday, October 27th, at 9:00 pm EST.

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