Sabres slice and dice Sens 5-1

On a night where absolutely nothing else noteworthy was going on in the world, the Sens decided to lay an egg. Sure, they had stretches of showing they were the better team, but overall they didn't deserve to win this game. They allowed a goal in the first minute of the second period and two in the first minute of the third, en route to an ugly 5-1 final score. Ridly Greig had the lone goal for the Sens, with Tim Stützle and Brady Tkachuk extending their points streaks with an assist, and Linus Ullmark made 29 saves on 34 shots. He wasn't good enough, but with the Sens only scoring one and generally playing sloppy hockey, you can't pin the loss solely on him.

It was a bad omen that the commentators were saying before the game that Brady Tkachuk had gone the longest to start a season without a fight in his career, because he then decided to fight in the first period after a questionably interfering hit on Tim Stützle. Now, it doesn't make sense to me for a top-line player like Brady to fight so early in a game against a grinder like Jordan Greenway, but also, the refs really botched the call, giving Tkachuk an instigator despite Greenway having his gloves off first. On the PK, a bad bounce on a routine pass from Thomas Chabot back to Nick Jensen behind the net led to Jason Zucker getting the puck and making a quick pass to JJ Peterka before Linus Ullmark knew where the puck was, which was just an unfortunate goal for several reasons. That being said, the Sens just looked... off in the first period, misplacing passes, getting caught offside, seemingly struggling on what has been a white-hot powerplay. On their best chance of the period, Josh Norris and Noah Gregor found themselves in on a 2-on-0. Norris passed to Gregor, who couldn't put it past a sprawling Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen; it was play where I would've liked to see Gregor return the puck to Norris, but oh well.

The Sens overall played a good road period in the first, but it looked like being down 1-0 was in their heads, because they were a little disjointed to start the second, and it allowed the Sabres to double the lead just 17 seconds in, with Ryan McLeod making a beautiful saucer pass to Bowen Byram who had snuck in completely unseen by Tkachuk. Mercifully, the Sens got one back on a great move by Ridly Greig, who first nearly goaded Rasmus Dahlin into a fight, then snuck in unseen to tuck in a pass from Tim Stützle, who was the recipient of an excellent zone-entry pass by Tkachuk.

The second period saw the Sens mount some pressure, but mostly get a number of icings and offsides, while givin gup several high-quality chances to the Sabres, including a couple breakaways. That kind of foreboded was to come—the third period started with the Sabres getting two goals in the first 37 seconds. Bowen Byram got his second of the game on a harmless shot from the point that Ullmark never saw, and then just after, Jake Sanderson shoved Tage Thompson on top of Ullmark and Alex Tuch put the puck home off Thompson's head. The Sens challenged for goalie interference but lost the challenge because nothing was going to go Ottawa's way this game. They killed that penalty, but were so slow to generate anything they even got the dread "X:XX without a shot" timer, nearly hitting 10 minutes. Then, with Adam Gaudette off for a trip, Peterka continued to feast on the Sens and got his second powerplay goal (and third point) of the game. That emphatically made sure the outcome of the game was not in doubt. The Sens managed nothing on a later powerplay, and then Tkachuk and Michael Amadio got into a late grappling match with Dennis Gilbert and Zach Benson, giving the refs something fun to do in sending them all home early before the game ended.

My Thoughts:

• I'm not sure how exactly Linus Ullmark has as many five-goals-allowed games as Anton Forsberg has shutouts. Ullmark seems calmer and more poised in net, so are the Sens just playing way worse defensively with him in net? It baffles the mind to understand this. I wouldn't say Forsberg has been making highlight reel saves that Ullmark's been missing. Maybe it's just an early-season outlier. I'm not ready to worry about Ullmark. Yet. I think.
• Tim Stützle still looks like a man on a mission out there. It's nice watching him develop like this.
• Brady seemed to come into this game angry, and while he made a great play on the Greig goal, it felt like he felt the need to go angrily at the Sabres. Brady's already a guy who plays with a tonne of emotion, I'm not sure what about tonight made him feel like he had to up it.
• The Sens seemed out of sync out there. I don't understand how they had so many icings and offsides. It's 12 games in, you should know the systems.
• Sometimes bad games happen. Even good teams have this happen. The most important thing is the response. It's only a bad sign and not an outlier if they follow up it with a similar effort against the struggling Islanders on Thursday. I'm betting we see a patented Travis Green bag skate at practice tomorrow, to smarten this team up. And hopefully we see Artem Zub back next game.

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