Gambling Senators continue to leave points on the table

To win at the casino, you cash out, you don’t keep gambling. In the casino hub of the world, Las Vegas, on Nevada Day, the Ottawa Senators played high-risk, low-reward hockey. It was shades of a team that has often struggled to hold onto leads in recent years.

For the majority of the game Friday night the Senators out-chanced, outplayed, and out-shot the Vegas Golden Knights 39 to 28. Nevertheless, when the Senators earned the lead they were unable to settle their game down. In the NHL, good teams find ways to get points and wins; the Senators blew three leads, losing 6-4.

“That was a hard-fought game,” said Senators coach Travis Green. “We probably deserve better than no points out of that game.”

The deserve-to-win-o-meter does not correspond to two points in the standings. The Senators only had themselves to blame. It was their best players who let them down with silly turnovers, mistakes and costly penalties. For a team that wants to go to the “next level,” their lack of game management was glaring.

The Senators opened the game strong earning an early 2-0 lead, but they lost it in a 21 second span. It began when their two stars, Brady Tkachuk and Tim Stützle, jumped up to their own blue line to cheat for offence, leaving Vegas’ Nicolas Roy all alone to score. Seconds later, after a Nicolas Hague slapshot took a bad bounce off Jake Sanderson’s leg, it was 2-2. Momentum lost.

The Sens reclaimed the lead 3-2. But this time Sanderson, who’s been Ottawa best player through six games, threw a poorly guided exit pass right to the league’s premier puck-stealer, Mark Stone, in the hopes of springing a counterattack. The turnover was punished with an Ivan Barbashev tip shot to tie the game 3-3.

Midway through the game, Green decided demote Michael Amadio to the third line in his first return to Vegas, where he won a Stanley Cup in 2023. Nick Cousins moved up to the first line with Stützle and Tkachuk and the three of them were dynamite, out-chancing Vegas 7-1.

Nevertheless, Cousins was the catalyst for the late-game collapse with a mental breakdown after the Senators regained the lead for the third time, 4-3. He took an ill-advised interference penalty with 5:05 left in the game at a point when the Senators had held Vegas to only six shots in the period. It was a penalty that just cannot happen when a team is trying to hold onto a lead late.

Vegas capitalized on the power play to tie the game 4-4. One minute later, instead of dumping the puck into the Vegas zone to pursue earning a point, the youngster Ridly Greig decided to take the puck to the net, leading to a turnover. Vegas raced down the ice to score on an odd-man rush, finished off by Keegan Kolesar, to give the Knights a 5-4 lead with 2:11 left in the game, clinching the win.

“We made a couple mistakes, probably that we'd like to have back,” said Green.

It isn’t just one leak but multiple little leaks that can sink a ship. The Senators consistently gambled and were careless when they took the lead.

It’s been the story of their season. Against the L.A. Kings in a barn-burner, they let a 7-6 lead slip away late in the third. The same happened against the Tampa Bay Lightning when they let 2-0 and 3-2 leads waste away, though they finally secured a 5-4 victory by the skin of their teeth. Ultimately, good teams don’t blow leads consistently; the Senators will have to become game managers instead of gunslingers.

Linus Ullmark’s return

It was a much-anticipated return to the crease for star netminder Linus Ullmark, who had missed the previous four games with a strain. He allowed five goals on 27 shots. It wasn’t his finest performance, and the goaltender was clear in stating it.

"If (the Senators) had a capable goalie in there today, they would have won 4-3, I would say," said Ullmark.

On the surface, Ullmark’s opinion of his play seems hyper-critical. He gave up one goal off a puck sailing wide that hit a defender to find the back of the net, while another goal was off a deflected shot. The goals he allowed were grade-A opportunities that were capitalized on by Vegas.

"Way too sloppy,” said UIlmark on his performance. “And in this league in this type of game you have to rely on the goaltender to shut the door. And not letting those two at the end to cause us to lose the game, I take it upon myself."

Interestingly, when you dig into the numbers, you can see where Ullmark is coming from. According to MoneyPuck.com, he had a -3.05 Goal Saved Above Expected. According to naturalstattrick.com, he saved only three out of six high-danger chances, while allowing one medium-danger-chance goal and a low-danger-chance goal.

But his coach disagreed with Ullmark’s assessment.

"Yeah, I don't know about that,” said Green. “You want your goalie to feel like he can win the game for you. I don't think he needed to win the game for us.”

For the first time in a long-time the Senators' goaltending wasn’t the root cause of their failure.

Kudos to the fourth line

As disappointing as the result was, there were positives against the Golden Knights, mainly from the fourth line. A next-man-up mentality is beginning to take shape on this Senators team. Cole Reinhardt replaced the injured Shane Pinto, who was scratched due to an undisclosed injury, and in the first two minutes of the game made a heads-up, behind-the-back pass to Adam Gaudette. When Gaudette snuck it past a lost Vegas goaltender Adin Hill, it gave the rookie Reinhardt his first career point in just his second NHL game.

The line of Reinhard-Gaudette-MacEwen out-chanced Vegas 9-4 while playing the third-most time of any Senators forward trio.

“You want to feel confident with your fourth line,” said Green. “And tonight, with Reinhardt being up, I wanted to see how he fit into the game. And I thought he gave us some good minutes as well.”

Later, Gaudette — who scored 44 goals last season in the American Hockey League — raced down the ice on the power play to snipe a rocket past Hill to give the Senators a 4-3 lead. For a while, it looked to be the game winner. The two goals from Gaudette were his first since the 2021-22 season, which funnily enough were scored for the same team: the Ottawa Senators.