Over the past two games, the Ottawa Senators had a chance to put eight points between themselves and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Instead, the Lightning won both games and moved past the Sens in the standings.
After Tampa’s 4-3 win on Tuesday, the Lightning struck again for a 5-1 win on Thursday. The score is a little misleading, as Tampa was only up 2-1 with just over four minutes left in regulation. The final result included two empty net goals.
It’s Ottawa’s second consecutive loss after a five-game win streak.
Michael Amadio scored the lone goal for the Senators, while goaltender Anton Forsberg stopped 27 of 31 shots (.871) in the loss. Ottawa’s offensive efforts were muted by a strong performance from Andrei Vasilevskiy, who stopped 26 of 27 shots for the Lightning.
Tim Stutzle extended his point streak to seven games with an assist on Amadio’s tip-in goal, but it wasn’t enough.
The game started with a power-play goal from Jake Guentzel at 9:23 of the first period, giving the Lightning a 1-0 lead. Amadio’s goal tied it early in the second period.
Five minutes later, Tampa Bay regained the lead at 10:14 when Thomas Chabot tried to intercept a rink-long Lightning stretch pass and missed the puck. Brandon Hagel did not and scored on a breakaway, beating Forsberg between the legs to make it 2-1.
The Lightning got their insurance marker late in the third, when Brayden Point fired a shot from the right circle to push the lead to 3-1. Erik Cernak and Mitchell Chaffee both added empty netters.
The win leaves the Sens and Lightning tied, but Tampa now holds down third by virtue of their two games in hand. Ottawa now slips to WC1 in the East.
After the game, TSN 1200’s Gord Wilson mentioned to head coach Travis Green that he presumed the coach didn’t see it as a 5-1 type of a game.
“No. Well, the score was 5-1, but we played a pretty good game. I hate saying that when you lose 5-1, but it’s a 2-1 game with 5 minutes left and we played a lot better tonight than we did the first game.”
The Senators, who were already without forwards Josh Norris, Shane Pinto, Nick Cousins, and Noah Gregor, got a good scare in the game when Brady Tkachuk slammed into the boards hitting the back of his head. Tkachuk struggled on his way back to the bench, falling once, but didn’t miss a shift.
The Senators hope they can bounce back that…