Ottawa Loses in Spectacular Fashion against Chicago

Local team embarrasses me in front of my friends, makes me question life decisions

I would like to congratulate everyone who spent their Saturday night doing something more meaningful than watching the Ottawa Senators deliver a clown college seminar on national television. I genuinely feel so bad for everyone who attended this game in person hoping to soak in the atmosphere of a packed arena for the first time in a long time. But, hey, at least we still have DJ Prosper. Now about the game—

Things go off to an inauspicious start with Parker Kelly checking Connor Murphy awkwardly into the boards, resulting a scary-looking injury. I won’t get into the semantics of whether Kelly had malicious intent or if the hit merited a game misconduct. We wish Murphy a speedy recovery from his injury. As a result, both teams spent the majority of this game with a short bench.

On the ensuing five-minute penalty kill, Connor Brown scored short-handed (just like we all knew he would). Put up your hand if you thought the good times would last forever:

Plot twist: the good times did last forever*. (*Actually they didn’t). Back at five-on-five Thomas Chabot absolutely chablasted (is this anything?) the puck past Marc-Andre Fleury to give Ottawa the safest lead in hockey:

If you lost your internet connection during the first intermission or decided to read a book or something then I envy you because everything started falling apart almost as soon as the second period commenced. Chicago scored seconds into the frame and then added a powerplay goal quickly thereafter. We’ll get into pointing fingers in the game notes.

About halfway though the period, Chicago scored again to take a 3-2 lead but after killing their third penalty of the night, Ottawa tied the game at three apiece courtesy of the doer of all himself, Nick Paul:

I’ll miss him when he leaves at the deadline but damn that guy deserves some playoff hockey. And if you think that’s unfairly cynical then I implore you go watch the highlights of this game starting after the Paul goal. Endless pain. Chicago won 6-3. Better luck next year, folks.

Game Notes

  • Both by Corsi and expected goals, five-on-five and all situation, Ottawa just completely fell off midway through the game, negating their strong start.
  • Anton Forsberg did not play well, allowing six goals on 28 shots, but five of those shots came from right down the slot so don’t absolve Ottawa’s defence by any means.
  • Colin White (yes I’m biased) had himself another dandy offensively leading the team with 0.47 individual expected goals.
  • Tim Stützle had an off night, taking two minor penalties (Sens fans may have some thoughts on the officiating in this one).
  • Whether you consider it fair or not to pin losses on individual performers, Nikita Zaitsev and Josh Brown had 5v5 SVA CF% rels of -23.82 and -11.77 respectively. I’ll let the numbers do the talking. Chabot (+17.05), Artem Zub (+10.36), and Erik Brännström (+8.08) fared much better.
  • If you prefer actual goals to nerd stats, Nick Holden got smoked +0 -4 on ice./

Game Flow

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