Nothing has been easy for the Ottawa Senators this season.
This night was no different and their blue line took another hit in the process.
The Senators surrendered a two-goal third-period lead, but Tim Stutzle played the role of hero by scoring the winner in the Senators’ 5-3 victory over the Boston Bruins on Thursday night at the Canadian Tire Centre.
“I just really liked the way we battled tonight,” said coach Travis Green. “It was a hard game, a physical game … I don’t want to say playoff hockey, but it was a hard-fought battle and you had to raise your compete level if you wanted to win. I thought our guys did that.”
Stutzle fired home his ninth of the season at 14:17 of the third by taking a pass and beating Joonas Korpisalo to bring the crowd of 16,059 at home. Just for good measure, he put it away into an empty net.
For the second straight night, the Senators finished the game with only five defencemen. Nick Jensen suffered an upper-body ailment and didn’t return for the third period.
To make matters worse, defenceman Jake Sanderson left briefly after blocking a shot with his left hand, but did return. He didn’t look right.
Shane Pinto, Dylan Cozens and Claude Giroux also scored for the Senators.
This game had a similar script to many others we’ve seen. The Senators took a 2-0 lead, and then the Bruins were all over them in the second and kept it up in the third. That’s the third time in four games it has happened.
After signing an extension, Pinto scored his ninth of the year to give the club a 3-1 lead at 1:06 of the third. The Bruins tied it up 3-3 on the strength of goals from Mark Kastelic and David Pastrnak, only 1:26 apart.
“There are going to be momentum shifts throughout a game,” Pinto said. “I thought we stayed pretty calm. We trust our game now, and we know the results that we’ll get if we play it.”
Chabot already on the shelf
The Senators were without defenceman Thomas Chabot after he left the club’s 3-2 OT loss to Dallas on Tuesday with an upper-body injury.
No timeline has been finalized, but the expectation is that Chabot, who is second on the Senators in average time on ice, will miss two weeks and likely more with what’s believed to be a muscle ailment he suffered reaching for a puck versus Dallas.
His loss meant that blueliner Nikolas Matinpalo dressed and played on the left side in the third pairing with Jensen. He went hobbling down the hallway late in the second period, but had taken a hit from Kastelic earlier.
The Senators will have to recall a blueliner from their American Hockey League affiliate in Belleville. The top two candidates will be high-end prospect Carter Yakemchuk and veteran blueliner Lassi Thomson.
Veteran blueliner Scott Harrington is on an AHL contract and could be signed to an NHL deal to help fill the gap as well.
Familiar Foes
The Bruins arrived in Ottawa on an seven-game winning streak.
The last time Boston lost was on Oct. 27 against the Senators in Ottawa. This was the third time in 17 days that the clubs have faced off. The Senators dropped a 3-2 decision to the Bruins last Saturday in Beantown.
The Senators pulled out to a 2-0 lead on the strength of Cozens’ seventh of the year with only 56.5 seconds left in the first. He took a perfect feed from Fabian Zetterlund and beat Korpisalo high.
Ottawa played a strong first and needed that one. The club could have been up by more,
For the fifth straight time, the Senators opened the scoring. Giroux took a pass and beat Korpisalo on the stick side. Ottawa was 0-for-19 in its last seven games with the man advantage.
That goal came at 1:28 of the first.
“I really liked our game the first 20 minutes,” said Stutzle. “They pushed really hard, they forechecked really hard, and then we found our game in the third. That was probably one of the best team wins we’ve had all year.”
Leevi gets a chance
Backup Leevi Merilainen made his fourth start of the year, but it’s the second time this season he’s faced the Bruins. He made 26 stops in a 7-2 victory at home.
He got off to a difficult start to the season, but two trips to the club’s American Hockey League affiliate in Belleville have helped Merilainen right the ship and get his confidence back.
Merilainen made 29 stops in a victory over the Utah Mammoth last Sunday to start this homestand. He had come up big in the second period of this one because the Bruins completely outplayed the Senators.
He wasn’t nearly as good in the third.
Ottawa was outshot 10-4 in the second, and the Bruins also played with more of a physical edge.
Merilainen didn’t have much of a chance on Morgan Geekie’s goal that got Boston on the board at 11:49 of the second to cut Ottawa’s lead to 2-1. He redirected a pass by Merilainen on the stick side.
Related