The Ottawa Senators Resolve Put To The Test

Nine games into the 2024-25 campaign, it wasn’t a must-win, but an 8-1 thrashing of the St. Louis Blues couldn’t have come at a better time for the Ottawa Senators.

After a pair of disappointing losses in Vegas and Denver Friday and Sunday, the Senators played their most complete game to date on both sides of the puck Tuesday to end their two-game slide.

Two games in which the Senators played led to their own demise.

Leading 4-3 with 5:05 remaining at “The Fortress,” a building the club was winless in six years, forward Nick Cousins was nabbed for an untimely interference call which resulted in a Tomas Hertl game-tying power play marker and a go-ahead goal by Keegan Kolesar one minute later.

Two nights later, the Avalanche tallied goals in the final moments of the first two periods, which no team wants to give up. The Senators clawed their way back in the final frame to tie the game at two. However, poor defensive zone coverage permitted Logan O’Connor to provide Colorado with a 3-2 lead. Ross Colton netted another shortly after. While the Senators were able to dent the twine with the first of Claude Giroux‘s two goals, the teams exchanged markers the rest of the way, resulting in an Avalanche 5-4 victory.

Putting a quick end to their two-game slide Tuesday was paramount. Past seasons have seen the Senators fall behind in the standings with poor endings to October combined with November to forget.

And heading into Madison Square Garden Friday against what is currently a 6-2-1 New York Rangers squad wouldn’t have been ideal.

Brady Tkachuk fell short of calling Tuesday’s thrashing a must-win. However, the Senators’ captain recognizes his team’s past failures, “I mean, in years past. of course, it’s gotten away from us. So I just think that’s the maturity, that it doesn’t even need to be really said too often or make a big deal, we know. I wouldn’t call it a must-win today, but we put some pressure on ourselves to elevate our game and bounce back and rebound. So  I thought we did a great job, but yeah, we have a really big game against one of the best in the NHL right now on Friday.”

The key to the Ottawa Senators this season is not to permit losses or subpar play to get the better of them, and their outing versus the Blues proved the team is capable of doing so.

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Goalie Linus Ullmark, who fairly or unfairly shouldered the blame for Friday’s loss in Vegas, rebounded with a solid outing, stopping 26 of 27 shots. Playing the past three seasons for the Boston Bruins, the Senators’ netminder recognizes his teammates require a total buy-in if they wish to win consistently.

“We have to understand that what got us a win today was because we did a really good job in all three zones. We back-checked. We fore-checked. We got pucks deep, and we really helped out each other. And, you know, just for example, Timmy (Stützle), I think it was 3-0, he does a sick back-check. Grabs a puck on a broken play, goes down and scores. if he doesn’t do that job beforehand, he’s not going to have the opportunity to score. And this for us to understand, that’s how we have to play every night.”

For his part, Stützle arguably had his best game in all zones in his four-plus NHL seasons. The 22-year-old registered two goals and two assists, extending his assist and points streak to a career-high five games. In addition, Stützle’s 14 points (five goals, nine assists) in only nine games finds the German-born centre among the league’s top 10 points leaders.