The Ottawa Senators took it on the chin on WWE Night at the Canadian Tire Centre on Saturday.
Now, they have to get up off the mat and get back on track after holding their annual skills competition Sunday.
While top centre Tim Stutzle scored his second career hat-trick, it wasn’t nearly enough to save the Senators as the club dropped a 8-4 decision to the Seattle Kraken and prepare to close out this home stand Monday night against the Nashville Predators at home.
Instead of closing the gap to move closer to the final wild-card spot in the East, the Senators remained seven points back of the New York Islanders with two games in hand.
This loss hurt because other than Stutzle there wasn’t a lot to write home about.
The club’s play in its own zone was horrid and it didn’t help matters that, after making his third straight start, Anton Forsberg was pulled after giving up three goals on five shots in the first period. Cam Talbot wasn’t much better, surrendering five goals on 16 shots.
That’s just not the kind of goaltending that will get you wins, especially when the team in front of you isn’t at all good defensively. Still, coach D.J. Smith didn’t want to point the fingers at his goaltenders.
“They could have had some for sure, but we didn’t play the way we have to play,” Smith said. “When we play a certain style, regardless of who’s in the lineup, we’re in the game every night and we didn’t play that style (Saturday).”
A big part of the Senators rise up the standings in the last month had been the goaltending. Talbot was solid in December and Forsberg had stepped up his efforts with back-to-back wins by stopping 55-of-56 shots in two games before facing the Kraken.
The Senators battled back from a 3-1 first period deficit to tie it up in the second, but Talbot allowed Seattle’s Daniel Spong to restore the lead only 22 seconds after Stutzle got his club back into it and, from there, the Kraken never looked back.
Talbot wasn’t about to let himself off the hook.
“We did a good job battling back,” said Talbot. “We had all the momentum and I think the turning point of the game was that next shift. I make a save on that 2-on-1 and it could have been a completely different game. I had to be better and I wasn’t to give us a chance to win that game.
“There’s no excuses on my end. I needed to give us a better chance to win and I just didn’t do that.”
That’s what you want to hear from your top goalie.
“It was a tough night for both of us. We’ll both take the heat on this one. I know I can speak for him. He’s as accountable as me,” Talbot added. “When you score four goals, your goalie should be able to make the saves to win the rest of the game. He’d be with me when I say we need to be better and we will be.”
The players weren’t about to absolve themselves of the blame either. The Senators know they weren’t good enough and if they’re not better against the Predators then Nashville will make Ottawa pay.
If the Senators are going to be successful, they have to use their speed and they can’t afford to have the number of passengers they had against the Kraken.
“We got what we deserved. Even if the goaltending is great we didn’t play the way we have to play,” Smith said. “We scored four goals and with four goals you should win every time in this league if you take care of the puck and you check.
“We’re fighting hard to get in the pack. It doesn’t matter if you lose, it’s how you play, and (Saturday’s) just not the way we want to play. We wanted cheap offence and we paid for it.”
All of Seattle’s goals came at even strength which resulted in some ugly numbers on the game sheet. Winger Alex DeBrincat and Shane Pinto were a whopping minus-five. Pinto and veteran Claude Giroux didn’t register a shot on struggling Martin Jones.
“I just think we were bad in every zone,” said veteran defenceman Nick Holden. “We played slow, and in the (defensive zone), when you open holes in the middle (of the ice), players are going to score. We just weren’t in our game very much (Saturday).
“We gave them too much speed and too much space through the neutral zone. We were letting them shoot from high opportunity areas. They’re one of the highest-scoring teams in the league and they showed us that they can score.”
The only choice for the Senators is to clean up their act and move on. This team has shown a strong ability to bounce back after poor efforts.
“We just have to forget about this,” said Stutzle. “We’ve played many, many good games and, unfortunately, it happened but we’ve just got to get ready (for Nashville).”
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