After ugly loss to Canucks, Senators could learn from inspired PWHL Ottawa team

Playing for the first time on the same night, Ottawa’s two professional hockey teams lost by a combined score of 9-5 on Tuesday.

Unlike the NHL Senators, Ottawa’s PWHL team played its franchise opener full out, pedal to the floor throughout, and only came out on the wrong end of a 3-2 overtime loss to Montreal because of the stellar play of Olympian goaltender Ann-Renee Desbiens. 

Congrats to the new Ottawa pro women’s team, which played before an appreciative audience of 8,318, at TD Place – a record crowd for a professional women’s game. 

Meanwhile in Vancouver, the Senators were playing out a familiar scene. An ugly, ugly loss by falling behind 5-0 in the first period before salvaging a bit of pride in a 6-3 defeat at the hands of the surging Canucks.

When you have lost 19 of 33 games, the losses are bound to come in a variety of ways. 

And so their fans have seen the Senators blow leads with second period meltdowns, start slowly and then wake up; lose by goaltenders letting in beach balls at critical times. Pretty much every possible way.

This one was kind of classic – falling apart after allowing a quick early goal on a long shot by the Canucks’ Ian Cole that goaltender Anton Forsberg could not pick up. 

Oh, and this. The rapid-fire goals allowed. In a stretch of one minute, 19 seconds, from 16:34 to 17:53 of the first period, Ottawa gave up three goals, two of them to Elias Pettersson.

Say goodnight. In fact, a lot of fans in the Eastern Time Zone did just that. Said goodnight and shut off their TVs.

Forsberg allowed four goals on 13 shots before getting hooked. 

Replacement Joonas Korpisalo then gave up two on 13 shots. 

Sadly, interim head coach Jacques Martin, now 3-4-0 behind the bench, is using similar sound bytes to his predecessor, D.J. Smith when it comes to assessing his team’s performance. Although, with so little to lose, Martin is even more blunt about what he is seeing from this group.

“To me, it was a lesson in how hard you have to compete, how hard you have to play – we need to do things quicker, we need to be harder on pucks,” Martin said. “It’s not one or two players. It’s overall. We can’t sustain. We win one game (Sunday vs Buffalo) and we revert back to where the team was before. 

“It doesn’t matter who we play, we have to raise our level of compete.”

And then Martin went after them harder. 

“You get to a point in a season or in your career, where you can’t look at excuses anymore, you’ve got to look at yourself,” Martin said. “I think we’re a better team than our record (14-19-0). And I’m not the only one that thinks that.

“When your best player is 36 years old, I think a lot of guys have to look in the mirror. We need to give more on a regular basis.”

Ouch. 

Forward Claude Giroux celebrates his 36th birthday on Jan. 12, by which time the Senators will have completed this five-game road trip. Considering they were 0-5 on their last big trip, the outlook is frightening if they continue like this. The Sens visit Seattle on Thursday. 

“It’s very frustrating right now, but I believe in this group,” said Giroux, using a phrase we have heard before in that room. “We have the potential to win 10 in a row if we do it the whole game and are consistent in it. And we have everybody doing it. If we do that, I strongly believe we can get on a roll. But we need to do it.”

Giroux’s most telling answer was extremely short. He was asked if a game like this in Vancouver could “put a fire in the belly” of the team for the rest of the trip. 

“Yeah, maybe,” Giroux said, with about as much conviction as his teammates played with Tuesday night. 

Among the few bright spots – Giroux had a goal and an assist. Vladimir Tarasenko scored twice in the third period, his seventh and eighth goals of the season. 

Here was another game in which the GM, Steve Staios, must have been taking furious notes, including mental notes about this roster.

We’ve said it here before, but this new management group, from owner Michael Andlauer to Staios and incoming senior VP of hockey operations, Dave Poulin, aren’t invested in this roster the way that outgoing GM Pierre Dorion and even head coach Smith were invested. 

There could be some interesting trades in the weeks ahead. 

Is anything really off the table?

Speaking of change, Poulin, before he was hired, said publicly that if he were the Senators he’d pursue ex-St. Louis Blues’ boss Craig Berube as head coach. 

It has been thought that Martin would ride out the rest of the season as interim head coach, but the Senators might want to lock up their coach for next year before someone else grabs him – whether Berube or someone else. Or would Ottawa wait to see who else comes free by the end of the season?

Perhaps. But if they are agreed on Berube, they could move on him sooner. 

Having already fired Dorion and Smith, brought in Martin and Daniel Alfredsson, and announced Staios, Poulin and associated GM Ryan Bowness as the management team, we know these decision-makers are not afraid of bold changes. 

Expect lots more to come.