Someone on social media referred to the Calgary Flames as a western version of the Ottawa Senators.
The Flames might take exception to that comparison.
Fair enough, these were two of the low-flying Canadian teams meeting on Tuesday night at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
In the end, the Senators showed that there is “struggling” and there is ‘S-T-R-U-G-G-G-A-L-I-N-G,’ which describes yet another horror-show ending for the Sens on the road.
Carrying a 3-2 lead into the third period, the Senators couldn’t last a full minute of the third period without surrendering a goal as Noel Hanifin scored at the 47-second mark.
At that point, there probably wasn’t a Senators fan in the 613 area code that felt confident their team would survive with a point, let alone two.
From there, three more unanswered goals, four in total in the third period to carry Calgary to an easy 6-3 win. The Flames improved to 41 points in 41 games, the very definition of mediocrity.
The Sens would kill for such a standard, falling to 14-22-0, 28 points in 36 games played.
On the road, the Sens are a sure thing: 4-12-0.
Who could even remember back to the first period in Calgary where the Senators caught a couple of breaks, to seize a 2-1 lead on goals by Jacob Bernard-Docker (the Canmore kid) and Dominik Kubalik (with Ridly Greig draped all over goaltender Jacob Markstrom)?
We won’t torture you with the details, but if you have watched any Senators hockey over the past five or six years, you will know what happened. Soft defensive play, careless giveaways, an inability to clear the zone when opportunities were there. Same old mistakes.
“There’s not much to be said at the end of the day,” said Senators defenceman Thomas Chabot.
Agreed on that point.
“It’s another loss.”
The frustration was telling on Chabot’s face as he spoke to reporters post-game. Of course, as we pointed out in the last file, nobody has experienced more Senators losses than Chabot, who began his Ottawa career at the dawn of the rebuild, in 2017-18.
“A few of those goals were given to them,” Chabot continued. “Everybody is aware of that in this room. We’re going to have to keep working away and fixing those.”
Sadly, staff and players have been talking about fixing those mistakes since D.J. Smith was first coaching this team in 2019.
“There’s nobody else to blame,” Chabot said. “There’s not one guy better than anyone else on this team. We’re all in this situation, we’re all losing games together. And the only way we’re going to get through this is by being with each other. Losing sucks . . . and the only way out is by sticking together and making it happen together.
“It’s about us in here, there’s nothing else to be said. It’s us that go out and play the games – we can do video or systems, whatever it may be, at the end of the day it’s about us going out and executing the game plan.”
It’s been said before, but the fragile mental state of this team is painfully obvious. No one denies that.
“We played really well for two periods, and then in the third when they get ahead, we just sell the farm,” said Senators interim head coach Jacques Martin, who grew up in rural Eastern Ontario.
“Of their first four goals, we gave them two,” Martin said. “To me, those are things we can correct. We have the puck five feet inside our zone and we don’t get it out. We turn it over and it goes in our net.”
As always, Martin found some positives.
“I can’t blame the effort,” he said, noting the decent start on the road, a pretty strong first two periods and a lead carried into the third. Plus, a rare special-teams win, with the Senators penalty kill going two-for-two and the power play one-for-three.
Those six even-strength goals by Calgary took a toll on Ottawa’s plus-minus stats.
Defencemen Jacob Chychrun and Jake Sanderson and forwards Josh Norris and Mathieu Joseph, back from injury, were all -3. Captain Brady Tkachuk was -4 and guilty of a giveaway on the sequence leading to the winning goal by Blake Coleman.
The Flames outshot the visitors 36-33.
Ottawa goalies continue to wilt under the onslaught.
Joonas Korpisalo took the loss to fall to 7-14-0 on the season. His goals-against average of 3.67 is ranked 56th in the NHL and the save percentage, .887, is tied for 52nd.
The Senators’ meandering five-game road trip concludes in Buffalo on Thursday, a meeting of the two bottom feeders of the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference.
Before the season, the Senators and Sabres were a couple of teams expected to make some noise in the east.
Instead, they are leaders in the conversation about the NHL’s most disappointing clubs.
from Sportsnet.ca
via i9bet
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