FIVE QUICK THOUGHTS
-Going to go ahead and chalk this one up to a wee bit of bad luck. The Senators controlled this game for most of the night (36-25 edge in shots) but just seemed to be on the wrong end of every bounce. Antti Raanta made a handful of ridiculous saves in the second period and in the third, Curtis Lazar, Derick Brassard, Kyle Turris and I think Bill Muckalt each had a chance to tie the game and caught iron. The Senators had three or four quality chances that Raanta stopped in the last eight minutes too. Just that kind of night for Ottawa, which sounds like an odd thing to say on a night when both Mark Borowiecki and Cody Ceci scored actual hockey goals.
-Certainly not Mike Condon’s best effort of the season. He’s been incredible for the Senators in a tough spot but he would probably like another chance at three of the four Ranger goals scored last night. There was a lot of talk about the lengthy break and how it might impact the Senators and it’s safe to say that Condon was the one who felt it the most. He seemed noticeably late on a number of plays in this one and just wasn’t reading the puck as well as he has the last little while. Even his puck-handling looked a little jittery. To his credit, Condon was quick to label a couple of the goals (1st and 4th) as “unacceptable”. The Senators need him to bounce back against the Red Wings.
-Wonder what sort of odds you could have got betting on Mark Borowiecki and Cody Ceci scoring in the same game let alone the same period. Borowiecki’s goal was his first in 50 games and Ceci’s his first in 36 games. While it’s nice to see both of those guys breaking lengthy goal-scoring slumps, it was especially important for Ceci, a player that was expected to provide at least some offence from the back end this season. 48 shots at 5 on 5 before that one finally found a way past Raanta on the glove hand side. Normally you’d say that the goals would start coming a little bit easier for Ceci now but based on that ridiculous second period save by Raanta on Ceci, I’m not so sure.
-Brutal time for an injury for Zack Smith. He had been playing some of his best hockey of the season the last ten games and was often one of the team’s most effective forwards. For a team already lacking depth on the left side, losing Smith for any significant period of time would be devastating. Clarke MacArthur return certainly isn’t imminent (Dorion mentioned late January/early February during an intermission interview) so the Sens really can’t afford to be without Smith for long. Boucher spoke about the injury briefly following the game and confirmed it was an upper-body injury and simply said “we’ll see tomorrow”.
-There’s usually at least one call you can complain about each night but in this game, there was a handful. And in particular, that goalie interference call on Jean Gabriel Pageau was downright embarrassing. Trying to think if I’ve ever seen a guy get called for interfering with the goalie on a play where he was in the act of shooting the puck. Not only did the Ranger defenceman steer Pageau into the goalie but he was SHOOTING the puck. Would be a little easier to laugh that one off if the Rangers didn’t tie the game six seconds into the power play.
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