The Ottawa Senators jumped out to a lead and held off a furious Tampa Bay Lightning to take a 2-1 win and snap the Lightning’s four-game win streak.
Shane Pinto opened the scoring with a goal almost 14 minutes into the first period. The Senators took that one-goal lead into the first intermission despite being outshot 13-8 and having the Lightning spend twice as much time in their offensive zone as the Sens had.
In the second period, the Senators took advantage of a Lightning too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty when Jake Sanderson ripped a shot past Andre Vasilevskiy to give the Sens a two-goal advantage. This power-play goal broke a streak of Ottawa coming up empty in nine consecutive power plays over their past four games.
A spin-o-rama pass from Stutzle to Sanderson 🌀 pic.twitter.com/P9YmzCjF6A
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 4, 2025
Sanderson became the fifth defenseman in Senators history to record consecutive 10-goal seasons, joining Erik Karlsson, Wade Redden, Zdeno Chara, and Steve Duchesne. He also became the eighth defenseman in Senators history to score 10 career power-play goals.
Two minutes later, Brandon Hagel banged home a rebound to cut the Senators’ lead to 2-1. It was his 66th point of the season at even strength, tied with David Pastrnak for the fourth-most among all players in 2024-25. Only Nathan MacKinnon (76), Leon Draisaitl (73), and Nikita Kucherov (71) have more.
Linus Ullmark stopped 32 shots and broke a tie with Joonas Korpisalo (21 in 2023-24) for the second-most wins by a Senators goaltender in his first season with the franchise, behind only Dominik Hasek.
The Senators continue to be successful when they get out to a lead. Their win percentage of .833 this season when scoring first is second-best among all teams behind the Winnipeg Jets (.838%).
It was the Senators’ 40th win of 2024-25, their most in a season since the club’s last playoff appearance in 2016-17 (44).
