Sens' Stars Rendered Ineffective in 3-1 Loss to Devils

This one had the potential to be a nightmare, folks. For starters (or backups, I should say), it was an Ottawa Senators hockey game that was 100% Linus Ullmark-free.

Secondly, it featured Travis Hamonic in the top two pairings, which given his play on the third pairing last season, would be impossible to watch without the resting heart rate of a person who took every drug at once.

Finally, the opponents were the New Jersey Devils, who've beaten Ottawa in five of the last six matchups between the two, and have this uniquely annoying habit of making Tim Stützle look like a 2021 Ottawa first-round pick whenever he plays them. So what happened?

Forsberg played a good game!

Hamonic was serviceable!

And Stützle...oh...

Yeah, they lost 3-1. More than anything, tonight featured a lack of execution for Ottawa's top-six forwards, who were dummied by New Jersey's while the strong effort from their depth players was neutralized by Jacob Markstrom and four rings of iron.

Nico Hischier had the best looks for the Devils in the scoreless first period, luckily whiffing on both net-front attempts he had. As for Ottawa, their fourth line looked like their most dangerous at times, in a period in which none of the forwards were bad, while Jake Sanderson just barely missed on two occasions, cracking the glass behind Markstrom on the latter.

After looking like the better team, things quickly unraveled for Ottawa in the second. An early Josh Norris tripping penalty was killed off in large part thanks to a sliding block from Nick Jensen, but an unlucky deflection off of Erik Haula and then Jacob Bernard-Docker gave New Jersey the 1-0 lead shortly after.

It's a bad break, but one the team could bounce back from, and it was looking like this would be the case as the Sens pushed back and Brady Tkachuk sent Ottawa to the power-play. However, in a worst-case scenario, a Claude Giroux giveaway led to a 2-on-1 rush on which Nathan Bastian capitalized.

Ottawa's further attempts to get back in the game in the third were foiled by Markstrom, and Paul Cotter, who's gone from a 4th-liner in Vegas to a breakout candidate in New Jersey, scored his 5th of the season to triple their lead.

With the clock winding down, the Sens did draw one last penalty, and with the help of the extra attacker, the Tkaptain deflected a Giroux shot past Markstrom to bring about the game's final score of 3-1.

Game Notes:

• We're so used to seeing Ottawa's top players dominate only to be let down by other factors, but today the opposite happened. I was impressed by the team effort at first, only to check the stats and see that their bottom six (with Adam Gaudette and Nick Cousins cooking a little bit) generated most of their chances. Credit to Markstrom for shutting them down, but one would think that our better finishers would've found a couple more goals had they better executed on passes and generated more shots on goal.
• Noah Gregor has been playing with Norris and Drake Batherson for a while now, and while the trio has looked good at times, they once again failed to create a goal at even strength. Gregor is pointless through four games, as are David Perron and Michael Amadio, though the latter two have been strong drivers of play thus far. Hopefully, they can get going soon.
• Deflected puck aside, I thought JBD had a good first game of the season. He and Hamonic both held their own and made me feel a tad better about Ottawa's defensive depth in general.
• I fully expect the Devils to finish Top-3 in the division this season, but it doesn't change that the Sens are going to have to put forth better games against the NHL's best if they want a playoff spot this year. Whether it's Forsberg or Ullmark in goal, it doesn't matter how few goals you allow if you can't outscore that number.
• Here's an example of a perennial playoff team the Sens have been beating as of late: the Tampa Bay Lightning. They'll look to take their 6th of the last 7 from the Bolts on Saturday, October 19th, at 1:00 pm EST.

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