Sens Get Piled On In 8-2 Loss to the Canes
The jerks are on team tank!
After an exciting day in the hockey world, everyone felt like something good in hockey was achieved. Don Cherry was finally stopped. It was fitting that the Sens would play the team that got to him the most, bunch of jerks you say. It seems the Cherry firing really did energize the Carolina Hurricanes as they came out firing on all cylinders and never really stopped.
The start of the game really set the tone for the rest of the night. Less than a minute into the game, the Sens defense struggled to get the puck out of their zone and a simple wrister by Warren Foegele slips through Anders Nilsson for the first goal of the game. An extremely bad look for the NHL’s first start of the week. The Sens did calm down a bit as the period went on, but Nilsson seemed shaky with every shot that came his way. As the period winded down, Jean-Gabriel Pageau takes an interference penalty giving the Canes their first power play. A quick moving power play results in a slap shot that was successfully blocked by Vlad Namestnikov only to bounce off him onto Martin Necas’s stick. The puck bounced off Nilsson’s pads and straight into the net to give the Canes a 2-0 advantage. With 46 seconds left in the period, Pageau draws a penalty himself but the power play didn’t have enough time to generate any meaningful chances. While I admire Bobby Ryan’s efforts, his first period fight left people more concerned about his hand than inspired. Luckily for him, he did not do any major damage this time.
The Sens started the second period with a minute and fourteen seconds left on the power play, but the Sens were not able to capitalize. It really seems that this team has had a never breaking curse when it comes to power play success. Through all the coaching changes we’ve been through, not one could quite figure it out. DJ Smith should start with finding a better option than Dylan DeMelo. The Sens get another power play opportunity shortly after but this time, they not only come out fruitless; Sebastian Aho ends up getting a shorthanded goal to make it 3-0. At this point, the game started to look like it was slipping away. The Hurricanes continued their domination of the Sens and added to their goal parade on with a goal by Haydn Fleury. The goal was a series of unfortunate events starting with a centre ice giveaway followed by Erik Brannstrom’s stick assisting on the goal but that was the end of Nilsson’s night. In all fairness, while the team wasn’t helping, he didn’t look comfortable all night long. The goalie change didn’t seem to have helped as Dougie Hamilton makes it 5-0 after Brady Tkachuk got pushed off the puck in centre ice. With 9 shots over two periods, the Sens were not showing any signs of life. A comeback attempt started towards the end of the period as Petr Mrazek misplayed the puck and gave Colin White an open net. Full credit to Tyler Ennis on some good plays to the puck to White.
The Canes pick up where they left, as a weird bounce gives them a 6-1 lead. No chance for Andy on that one as the puck was tapped in from the air behind him. With 10 minutes left in the period, Tkachuk makes it 6-2 on a jammed goal from his favourite spot on the ice, right standing over the goalie’s head. Ryan Dzingel adds another goal for good measure and skips the bench fly by out of respect to his old teammates, we miss you too Ryan. The Sens love their traditions but decided to change it a little tonight, instead of first NHL goal the Sens gave up a first goal with the team. Joel Edmundson scored the eighth and final goal of this painful game to end the game at a score of 8-2 with shots favouring the Hurricanes 43-28.
Game Notes
- By no means was it the reason the Sens lost, but the officiating in tonight’s game was absolutely inconsistent and frustrating to watch
- Erik Brännström is not NHL ready, plain and simple. While he’s not making any glaring mistakes, he’s also not making many impressive plays either. This is not a knock on him, but he has the potential to be a cornerstone of this team’s defense and the Sens need to properly develop him. I don’t think a few weeks in the AHL will hurt him at this point.
- Ken Warren from the Citizen tweeted this interesting fact, didn’t know Carolina was Sens’ kryptonite:/
Should the Senators go on to lose this one, they will have posted a record of 3-16-0 at the PNC Arena over the past dozen seasons.
— Ken Warren (@Citizenkwarren) November 12, 2019
- The Carolina Hurricanes are tough to dislike, they seem to play good honest hockey with structure and skill. While Dzingel had his reason to not do a fly by the Sens bench, Edmundson who was celebrating his first Canes goal also had the sense to skate straight to centre ice. It may not be much, but that’s how you win fans.
- Speaking of being tough to dislike, this was the Hurricanes official twitter account reaction after the game, I know some will find it insulting but honestly it’s brilliantly funny:/
Mood pic.twitter.com/1WVNbAezde
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) November 12, 2019
- The Sens struggled throughout this game, especially players like Nilsson and Chabot who did not have a great game. It was nice however, to see Bobby Ryan putting in a good effort tonight and showing more of a physical side to his game./