Despite their best efforts, the Ottawa Senators came up short against the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday.
Mikko Rantanen had a goal and two assists and Lars Eller scored a bizarre winner as the Avalanche won their fourth straight game with a 5-4 victory over the Sens.
Colorado defenceman Cale Makar had a goal and an assist while Valeri Nichushkin and Evan Rodrigues chipped in with a goal apiece. Nathan MacKinnon notched three assists for the Avalanche (39-22-6) and goaltender Jonas Johansson stopped 31 shots.
Drake Batherson, Shane Pinto, Travis Hamonic and Brady Tkachuk scored for the Senators (33-31-4), who dropped their fourth straight. Tim Stützle had three assists and Mads Sogaard made 25 saves in the Sens net.
WATCH | Eller scores weird winner against Senators:
Lars Eller’s strange second period goal proved to be the winner as Colorado defeated Ottawa 5-4.
The Senators, who were coming of a long western road trip, came out sluggish. The Avalanche registered the game’s first seven shots and led 2-0 before Ottawa recorded its first shot almost eight minutes into the game.
Makar opened the scoring at 2:35 with a wrist shot from the top of the faceoff dot, and then Nichushkin made it 2-0 on a power play at the five-minute mark.
“The first goal is the biggest goal, for me,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said.
Ottawa did have 12 of the final 15 shots of the period and were rewarded with a power-play goal as Batherson redirected a slap pass from Stützle with 27 seconds remaining in the opening frame.
“We left it all out there. It’s frustrating because you want to get rewarded for all the hard work,” Tkachuk said. “I though it was huge character displayed by this group with all the adversity we faced being down three going into the third, just to give us a chance, it’s disappointing.”
‘Result we didn’t deserve’
The Avalanche scored three times in the second period, including a very strange goal, to take a 5-2 lead.
After Rantanen gave the Avalanche a 3-1 lead at 4:23, Pinto drew the Senators back to within a goal at 3-2 eight minutes…
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