The Ottawa Senators faced the Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights in Sin City last night hoping to register their first win in three matchups on their current five-game western road trip. With a dismal record of 3-7-0 in their last 10 games, the Sens were looking to restore some of their pride and give their diehard fans some reason not to jump off the Champlain Bridge into the icy waters of the Ottawa River.
Senators fans can’t be blamed for hitting the bottle hard this Christmas season. Afterall, heading into Las Vegas, the prospect of their team seeing postseason action was pure fantasy. With a points percentage (PTS%) of .440, the team is one of the worst five in the league.
Still, fans were hoping that The City of Second Chances would offer them and their team some hope. Instead, all it gave them was more heartache with the Senators going down to the Golden Knights 6-3.
What can we take away from the Sens’ fourth consecutive loss – their longest losing stretch this season?
The Senators Don’t Have the Goaltending it Takes to Compete
The question on everyone’s mind heading into last night’s game was whether Joonas Korpisalo could get back on track. Heading into Las Vegas, he had allowed four or more goals in his last seven games.
Related: Senators Could Regret Joonas Korpisalo Contract
Not only that, but his save percentage (SV%) was .898 and his goals-against average (GAA) was 3.33. Anton Forsberg’s numbers are as bad at .876 and 3.23 respectively. Taken together, the team’s goaltending isn’t even close to being good enough to compete in the NHL where the average SV% is .904.
Last night Korpisalo allowed six goals on 31 shots notching a SV% of .806 driving his season average even lower. Some pundits refuse to lay the blame at his feet arguing that his teammates hung him out to dry.
Even so, the big Finnish twine minder allowed a few goals that were so soft you could have put your head down on them and fallen asleep. Perhaps the softest was Johnathan Marchessault’s goal at just over six minutes into the second frame that tied the game. The goal was a shot taken from just inside the Ottawa blue line that Korpisalo failed to track. It looked like he was surprised by the shot, but it’s one he should have had.
The Senators are simply not going to succeed unless their goaltenders can steal them a game or two by standing on their heads between the pipes. And there are goals like Marchessault’s that they give up all too often. That was on full display last night in Las Vegas.
The Senators’ Best Players Stepped Up but Must Do More
When a team is in a rut the likes of which the Senators find themselves, their best players have to pull them out of it. And that is something Ottawa’s best has not been doing.
Heading into last night’s contest, captain Brady Tkachuk, alternate captain Claude Giroux and rising star Tim Stützle had just three goals between them over their last five games. Tkachuk had notched only one assist over that stretch.
Of the team’s four top points getters heading into Las Vegas, Drake Batherson was the most productive racking up a point per game in the last five he played. The question on the mind of Sens fans was whether he could keep that up against the Golden Knights.
What the loss last night showed was that the Senators’ best players understand what is required of them with Stutzle, Giroux and Batherson each marking up the score sheet for a point off three assists between them. Tkachuk broke his scoreless streak lighting up the lamp behind the Vegas goal late in the third stanza. Had his luck been better, several shots that he rang off the post would surely have been goals.
Josh Norris led the way for his team with a goal and an assist. The goal was his second in as many games. The young centreman was a threat around the Golden Knights’ net all night making repeated drives into the dirty areas in front of Vegas netminder Logan Thompson.
Other leaders such as blueliners Jake Sanderson and Jakob Chychrun stepped up to register an assist each.
Last night the Senators’ best players showed they cared and understood what was expected of them. It’s just that their team needed more from them to win. Fans will be watching closely to see whether their team’s best players take their game to the next level. They must if the team is to have any chance of returning to respectability.
Hope for the Senators’ Power Play
Norris and Ridly Greig scored two goals on the power play just minutes apart in the first period. That broke a run of no goals on their previous nine power play opportunities. Not only that, but Stutzle’s assist on the Norris goal was his first power play point since the team’s trip to Sweden last month.
What got Senators fans excited about the two goals was that they were scored against a team that possesses the second-best penalty kill in the league. They dared to hope that the Senators could return to their power play form from last season when they were ranked 8th in the league with a 23.5% power play percentage (PP%). This season their PP% is ranked 24th at a dismal 16.7%.
Not only that, but Greig’s marker put his team ahead 2-1 leaving fans to hope that their team could build on the lead. Marchessault’s softy a few minutes later extinguished that fantasy.
In the second period, the Golden Knights’ Chandler Stephenson took a little shine off the glow of the Senators’ two power play goals when he scored shorthanded. Even so, the Senators demonstrated that their power play does have a pulse and could be revived going forward. They’ll need to build on that in Arizona tomorrow night when they take on the Coyotes.
Senators’ Penalty Kill Continues to Disappoint
The Senators are awful at killing penalties. They rank 28th in the league with a penalty kill percentage (PK%) of just 73.4%. Last night did nothing to show that things are getting any better.
Vegas put up markers on two of their five power plays on goals by Nicolas Roy in the first frame and William Karlsson in the third. Unless the Senators can do something to address their dreadful penalty kill, success is sure to elude them for the rest of the season.
The Second Period Is Killing the Senators
As they have in so many other games this season, the Senators turned in an appalling second period. What was a competitive 2-2 game at the end of the first period became a 5-2 romp for the Golden Knights by the end of the second. They simply let the game slip away in the second.
The three unanswered goals Vegas scored in the second frame brought the total number of goals the Senators have allowed during the middle 20 minutes to 44. That’s almost double what they have allowed in the first and third periods.
The Senators seem to be missing an ability to push back when faced with a turning point in the game. Last night, it was Roy’s shorthanded goal that put the Golden Knights ahead by one, mid-way through the second period. Instead of answering and doing something to regain the momentum, the Senators seemed to lose their confidence. They became hesitant and looked fragile. By the end of the period, the Golden Knights owned them sitting on a 5-2 lead.
If the Senators have any hope of turning things around they need to develop an ability to respond when faced with a setback. There are too many times when they roll over instead of playing harder and battling. That happens too often in the dreaded second period.
Other Game Notes
Shane Pinto is skating in Ottawa preparing for a possible return to play in late January after his 41-game suspension for improper sports wagering activities is complete (from, Bruce Garrioch, “SNAPSHOTS: Suspended centre Shane Pinto has resumed skating in Ottawa”, The Ottawa Sun, 16/12/2023).
Senators winger Vladimir Tarasenko was absent in last night’s contest tending to family matters. It was the second consecutive game he has missed after being away in the team’s previous matchup against the Dallas Stars on Dec. 15.
What’s Next for the Senators
The Senators are on their way to Arizona where they’ll lace up their skates for a game against the Arizona Coyotes tomorrow night. That’s about as easy as it gets for the Sens this week.
They finish up their road trip on Thursday with a tilt against the formidable Colorado Avalanche who are battling for top spot in the Central Division. They then head home to take on their Atlantic Division rival Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday, Dec. 23.
Finally, after the loss to the Golden Knights, almost everyone is asking how much longer head coach D.J. Smith will be allowed to remain at the helm of his floundering team. Watch for a coaching change soon.