Jets 5, Senators 1
The road to the finish line of this season will be difficult enough for the Ottawa Senators.
They didn’t make it easy on themselves Thursday night.
The Senators were saying all the right things as they prepared to face the Winnipeg Jets at the Canadian Tire Centre, but the result was all too familiar as the club dropped a 5-1 decision in front of 11,183.
Only Nick Paul was able to beat Winnipeg goalie Laurent Brossoit on the 30 shots he faced. Mark Scheifele led the way for the Jets with a hat trick — all on the power play — and a four-point effort while Nikolaj Ehlers and Kyle Connor also chipped as the Senators closed out their season series against Winnipeg with their second straight loss.
This wasn’t one of the better efforts for the Senators, who had dealt defenceman Dylan DeMelo to Winnipeg on Tuesday and were facing a Jets team battling for a playoff spot. They fell behind and just couldn’t seem to dig themselves out of the hole. Now, they have to prepare to face the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday night to close out a six-game homestand.
The Senators dropped a 5-2 decision to the Jets on Feb. 8 in Winnipeg. Not only did Patrik Laine score a hat trick in that game, all of them came on the power play as well.
“Once they got on the power play, they just kept scoring,” said Paul. “We needed a better bounce back and we started trying to make too many plays and turning pucks over. With a team like that, they’ve got lots of speed and lots of transition and we played a lot in the (defensive) zone.”
Special teams were the difference as the Jets cashed in with power-play goals by Scheifele while the Senators went 0-for-4 with the man advantage.
Trailing 4-1, the Senators and Jets had both fired 23 shots on goal, but Ottawa couldn’t capitalize on its opportunities and Brossoit was there to make the saves when they did get good chances.
Marcus Hogberg wasn’t getting a lot of help in his own zone and the Jets pulled out to the 4-1 lead with two goals in a span of 1:02 in the second.
Ehlers scored at 5:54 to give the Jets the three-goal lead when the puck bounced off Ron Hainsey’s skate and right to Ehlers. Left alone in front, Connor gave the Jets a 3-1 advantage with his 30th of the season when he beat Hogberg on the glove side at 4:52 of the second with Ottawa caught running around in its own zone. Neither goal was pretty.
“The effort was good, the (penalty killing) let us down in a big way,” said Hainsey. “The PK has got to be better, we’ve got to get it out of the zone better and sometimes it bites you.”
Though the Senators talked about staying out of the box, that wasn’t the case, and it turned out to be costly as the Jets pulled out to a 2-1 lead in the first on the strength of two power-play goals.
Scheifele’s second of the game at 17:46 with a tip past Hogberg allowed Winnipeg to pull into the lead after the Senators had played what would be considered a decent first period.
Perhaps the highlight of the first period came only moments after the goal when Drake Batherson dropped the gloves with Winnipeg’s Jansen Harkins. According to a search on hockeyfights.com, it was only the second fight Batherson has had in his pro career.
Late in the third, Brady Tkachuk fought Tucker Poolman after a questionable hit on the Ottawa winger.
“We play hard,” said Smith. “We’re not going to get pushed around and we’re going to stick up for each other. I thought it was a knee-on-knee (by Poolman) at the end and Brady did what he had to do. We just didn’t play smart enough. We turned a lot of pucks over and we didn’t get to the net nearly enough.
“We’ve got to be a little harder offensively.”
Earlier, Scheifele tied up it up 1-1 with his 24th of the season with 3:25 left in the period Left alone in front, Hogberg had no chance as Scheifele fired it home with Chris Tierney sent off for hooking DeMelo.
After a faceoff win by Colin White in the Winnipeg zone, Paul took the puck at the top of the circle and fired a bullet by Brossoit on the sticks side at 11:50 to open the scoring.
The Senators finished the game without winger Scott Sabourin. He was given a 10-minute misconduct by the officials after he sprayed Scheifele with a water bottle when he was near the Ottawa bench with 11:23 left in the third period..
“I didn’t really care,” Scheifele told reporters in the Winnipeg room. “It was kind of stupid. It didn’t really bother me. If it got in my face, I might have been a little more mad but it was kind of stupid.”
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