Embarrassing Basement Bowl vs. Sharks on tap for reeling Senators

Where the Ottawa Senators are concerned, there is little to grasp but the moral victories.

So, that mini-rally in the third period against the Buffalo Sabres was fun.

Finding out that, hey, that other struggling team in the Atlantic Division can also cough up the puck under pressure. Look at Brady Tkachuk and Ridly Greig forcing turnovers in the Buffalo zone, freeing up Claude Giroux to score twice in the third period, closing the gap from 4-1 to 4-3 with time to play on Thursday.

Of course, the fun ended in a familiar way. Ottawa couldn’t keep the puck in the zone and the Sabres skated up ice for the empty-net goal to seal it.

Ho hum, another five-game road trip ends without a single point.

Every game in a season tells an individual story. But with the Sens, it is the collective picture that is so stunning:

To be approaching mid-January and have just 14 wins in 37 games.

To have four victories and 13 losses on the road.

To play 10 games away from home in the month of January and lose all 10, while getting outscored 49-27.

They say it’s hard to win games in the NHL, but the reverse is also true – it takes some doing to lose at this rate; to play 15 games between Dec. 12 and Jan. 12 and lose 12 of them.

We give you the San Jose Sharks, who lost 12 straight before winning in Montreal on Thursday. The Sharks are in Ottawa on Saturday for a matinee match between the impoverished and the hard-done-by.

But seriously, even mediocre teams in this league win roughly half their games, and this Ottawa team was supposed to be ready to take the ‘Next Step.’ Nobody warned us that the next step would be backwards.

Flash back to Dec. 11. The Senators walked into Detroit and spanked the Red Wings 5-1 to get back to .500 at 11-11-0. We need more of that, everyone said. Let’s see a little hot streak, make up some of those games in hand and make a push.

Today, that 11-11-0 period is being recalled as the good old days. On Dec. 12 at the Canadian Tire Centre, the Sens got schooled by the Carolina Hurricanes and it has been downhill since.

The start of 12 losses in 15 games to fall nine games below .500.

To make matters worse, the Senators watched their goaltender, Anton Forsberg, suffer a groin injury in the first period versus the Sabres, with the score tied 1-1. Buffalo’s Zach Benson tried to push a puck past Forsberg with one hand on his stick and as Forsberg stretched out his right leg, the groin gave way. He had to be helped off the ice, unable to put any weight on that right leg.

Off the bench came a cold Joonas Korpisalo and it showed.

Two of the three shots he faced in the first period got past him – both off the stick of Sabres sniper Tage Thompson.

Just the kind of adversity from which the Senators have not been able to recover. Although, there was that impressive push over the final 20 minutes.

“We turned it on in the third, but we need to do it the whole game,” Giroux said afterwards. “It sucks right now. I don't know if it's confidence or . . . I don’t think it's a lack of effort. At the end of the day, we’ve just got to be better.”

The message after two periods, down 4-1, was to “stick together, support each other.

“Sometimes it’s easy to go out there and start pointing fingers. Just stick together. Make sure everyone’s going,” Giroux said.

“We’re all in this together. It’s pretty tough right now.”

That is an understatement.

Meanwhile, interim head coach Jacques Martin continues to try to accentuate the positive for his young core of players.

“I liked the way we came back,” Martin said. “We made some mistakes that cost us goals, but I liked the way we rallied in the third period. I think that was a good confidence (boost) for the guys.

“You play the right way and keep pressure on that defence, you’re going to get some turnovers and scoring opportunities from it. We probably had some chances to tie it, but we’ve got to keep learning.”

It’s likely no one needs a confidence boost more than centre Tim Stützle, who was -2 on the night and had a single shot on goal in more than 25 minutes played. It was Stützle who couldn’t control the puck in the final minute to generate one last chance, as the Sabres took it up ice and scored into the empty net.

Getting Stützle on track will surely be a major goal in the second half of this bizarre season.

Home ice beckons, with a rare 4 p.m. ET start on Saturday against San Jose, the last-place team in the east vs last place team in the west.

“It will be good to play in front of our fans,” Martin said. “Our fans are knowledgeable – if we play hard, they’ll respect that.”