Sens get goalied in 3-2 loss to 'Hawks

After a putrid performance on Thursday, the Ottawa Senators were looking to do better this afternoon. They can definitely say they did better, but the result was the same: another disheartening loss to one of the league's bottom-feeders. They dominated play, outshooting the Chicago Blackhawks 35-14 across the second and third periods, but really strong play by Petr Mrazek let his team squeak out the 3-2 victory. The return of both Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub to the lineup wasn't quite enough to earn the win.

The game got underway with few whistles but also few chances. It says a lot about Thursday's perfroamnce that 10 minutes in, the Sens were behind in shots 5–3, and I was thinking how much better they looked than in the first against Anaheim. The opening goal came off the stick, I mean skate, of Nick Foligno, who, fun fact, is a former Senator, which the broadcast would've only told you 412 times. The Sens did manage to generate some odd man rushes, including this beauty with Claude Giroux and Tim Stützle that tied things up:

It must've felt nice for Timmy to score just his second goal in nine games (and fourth in 21). There was also a scary moment when referee Furman South took a hard shot off the face and left while bleeding, but he was back on the ice to start the second period.

The second period saw the Sens get the game's first two powerplays and give up the best chances on both of them, until Timmy decided he was done with it and skated through the whole 'Hawks team to set up an easy tic-tac-toe goal for Jakob Chychrun from Vladimir Tarasenko.

Next though, Connor Bedard did Bedard things and managed to squeak the puck through Korpisalo's legs to tie it back up after a scrambled play and a failure by the Sens to get the puck out when they had the chance. It was the type of play that great players make to take advantage of their opponents' mistakes, but, frankly, the play should have never gotten to that point.

The third period was mostly frustrating. Already up 29-14 in shots, the Sens outshot Chicago 13-8 in the third, but Petr Mrazek was done allowing goals at just the two. Ottawa got away with one after a Bedard goal was brought back on an offside review, but then Jason Dickinson potted one with under 2 minutes to play, and Ottawa couldn't score. Sometimes you outshoot the opponent 42-22 and still lose. Were there things that could have been improved upon? Of course. Do the Sens still lose this game if the goalies had switched ends after the first? Probably not. Sometimes that happens, and the goalie is part of your team. Alas.

My Thoughts:

• The powerplay looked disjoined, including multiple careless passes in their own end that were intercepted. Most of the time they were generating maybe one shot in the offensive zone before the puck gets sent down the ice. Put Timmy and Brady back together on the PP, I beg you – that is one combination that we know has worked in the past.
• The team looks so confident passing 5-on-5. For some reason, having a man advantage makes them miss all their passes. I don't get it. I'm sure you don't either.
• The expected goals across all situations (per Natural Stat Trick) were 3.4 to 1.95 for Ottawa. For maybe the 20th time this season, they were sunk by the other team getting better goaltending. That's not to excuse all the breakdowns but sometimes it's really as simple as goalie play.

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