Senators Lose 4-0 to Sabres in Return to Ottawa
At least Travis Hamonic won't be blamed for this one.
The Ottawa Senators are getting themselves into trouble.
They're not out of it by any stretch, but they're also falling faster than any other team in the Eastern Conference in a furious playoff race. If the dead-last Buffalo Sabres can do this to them, I'm scared of what mediocre hockey teams like the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Islanders could accomplish. There's no sugar-coating: tonight stunk.
As for tonight's game, even though Ottawa doubled up Buffalo in shots in the first period, none of them were particularly threatening, save for a Zub chance at 4-on-4. Meanwhile, two of Buffalo's best chances came off the stick of Jack Quinn, who all of us 202o Draft obsessives know was the best shooter in the class.
Then again, Quinn had registered just 5 goals in 34 games heading into tonight, so maybe it's just a case of Ottawa doing Ottawa things, making the worst teams in the league look good. Either way, Quinn scored on both his chances and the Sabres took a 2-0 lead into the intermission.
Buffalo went on to double their lead in the second period, as Nick Jensen flipped a pass right to Dylan Cozens, who beat Anton Forsberg at the 4:11 mark, and 6 minutes later, a Ryan McLeod shot deflected in off of Thomas Chabot making it 4-0 Buffalo. A whole lot of "Yikes" without much to put into the positive column.
Determined to twist the screwdriver into Forsberg even further, the Sens allowed two partial shorthanded breakaways in the final minute of the period. Boos began to rain down from the stands of the CTC, and I don't blame the fans one bit.
The third period featured the Senators piling more shots onto Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, ending up with 35 on the night compared to Buffalo's 21. That said, it seemed like Anton Forsberg had the tougher workload – the only time I felt like the Sens were close to scoring was a Shane Pinto shorthanded breakaway late in the game, and he was able to beat Luukkonen, but not the post. Buffalo didn't do anything offensively in the final 20 minutes, mostly because they didn't need to. With the 4-0 shutout loss, the Sens have lost 4 in a row, and 6 of their last 7.
Game Notes:
- You'd like Forsberg to stop a few of those goals, but I'm sure he'd like to not face half a dozen breakaways in two periods of play, especially when his forwards can't even do that over four whole games. Almost makes me want to see Mads Sogaard start against the Penguins, you know that will get these players to start playing some defence.
- Travis Green had been getting some mileage out of his top players for most of the season, but not only have none of them been difference-makers recently, some have been detrimental. Tim Stutzle somewhat resembled an NHL player tonight, but Josh Norris continues to struggle when he's not on a line with Brady Tkachuk. Reuniting them is a must, since Tkachuk also seems to be effective when partnered with Norris.
- Chabot was on the ice for all four Sabres goals. Seems like every game on this losing streak, two pairs break even while the other one gets demolished.
- The penalty kill actually looked really strong tonight, and I'm pretty sure it featured one of Ottawa's only rush scoring chances in the game.
- As alluded to above, next up are the Pittsburgh Penguins, on Saturday, January 11th, at 4:00 pm EST.
