FIVE QUICK THOUGHTS
-Through the first 19 minutes or so, everything seemed to be going according to plan. The Chicago Blackhawks looked the part of a winless hockey team playing with zero confidence and the Senators seemed to have their legs underneath them. It felt like it was only a matter of time before the Senators opened the scoring. A textbook road period, really. Only the thing is, the period was a full 20 minutes long and the game a full 60. One lucky bounce on that goal by Brandon Hagel and the wheels completely came off. Patrick Kane extended the lead early in the second period and the Senators were toast.
-What’s really going to define this team is how they respond in those moments when things don’t go their way. Both within a game and within a long regular season. That game against the Dallas Stars was a great response to an ugly stretch and now they have to find a way to do the same when they travel to Minnesota tonight. Last season, when times got tough, this team had no ability to course correct and the bad nights seemed to pile up in an awful hurry. They’ll be looking to their young core to lead a solid bounce-back effort against the Wild because that a pretty dreadful effort against a bad Chicago team.
-The Ottawa Senators have changed their goaltending status to “It’s complicated”. Okay maybe it’s a little bit premature but DJ Smith is going to have some interesting decisions to make in the crease as the schedule gets a bit busier here in the month of November. Matt Murray has missed a lot of time early in the season and it’s tough to get a read on where he’s at. No doubt he would want a few of those goals back last night. Meanwhile Filip Gustavsson has a couple good starts under his belt but also happens to have a two-way deal and was really expected to spend most of the year in Belleville. Gustavsson can really complicate things further with another good start on Tuesday night.
-Like many struggling defenceman before him, Nikita Zaitsev has entered that unenviable zone where everything is his fault. Just being in the general vicinity of a goal against is enough to draw the ire of fans lately. Fact is, Zaitsev has struggled this year. Everyone outside of Thomas Chabot and Artem Zub have had off nights on that Ottawa blueline but Zaitsev is a bit of an easy target right now. He plays a lot of hard minutes for this team and does a lot of little things that coaches notice but fans don’t always appreciate. And that’s important but he also needs to a better job on the things fans do notice though like uhh not being on the ice for every goal against.
-On a night where positives were hard to find, the Senators actually got a decent effort from a fourth line of Zach Sanford, Dylan Gambrell and Logan Shaw. That was probably the only line that had anything going through two period sand even when the forward lines were shuffled around a little bit in the third period, those three were still fairly noticeable. Tyler Ennis was good too actually. Alex Formenton finished the game strong. And while it’s nice to get a good effort from those guys, Ottawa is in pretty deep trouble when those players stand out. Onward and upward!
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