The Ottawa Senators will look for significant improvement from their defense when they continue their West Coast swing with a Saturday afternoon matchup against the San Jose Sharks.
Since losing top goaltender Linus Ullmark to a lower-body injury on Oct. 21, the Senators are 1-2-1 and have allowed 20 goals.
Their struggles began with a 6-2 home loss to the Sharks on Oct. 22, then continued Thursday night when they rallied from a four-goal deficit in the third period – only to fall 6-5 in overtime to the Los Angeles Kings.
Jonas Johansson allowed four goals on 16 shots against the Kings before being pulled at 10:54 of the second period. Samuel Ersson stopped 20 of 22 shots in relief.
“Obviously, proud of the way we battled back to tie it up,” said Senators forward Drake Batherson. ” ‘Ers’ came in, played well. Like I said, got back to our game in the third, and got a big point, really.”
Dylan Cozens had two goals and an assist, Batherson had a goal and two assists, and Tim Stutzle had three assists for the Senators, who trailed 5-1 after two periods.
“Obviously, it’s not good enough by us,” Cozens said. “We gave them too much in the second period there and dug ourselves a hole.”
Batherson owns 11 points (five goals, six assists) over his six-game point streak and Cozens has five points (three goals, two assists) in his past three games. Stutzle posted his 10th career game with at least three assists.
How might Ottawa’s defense improve? Defenseman Thomas Chabot, the captain, played 22:37 against the Kings after missing four games with an upper-body injury, which gave the Senators a healthy defense corps for the first time this season.
Ottawa’s Hayden Hodgson was slated to have a hearing Friday with the NHL Department of Player Safety after boarding Brandt Clarke of the Kings. Hodgson received a major penalty and a game misconduct.
While Ottawa has dropped two straight, San Jose stopped a two-game skid on Thursday with a 3-2 win against the visiting Vancouver Canucks. Will Smith scored two of San Jose’s three third-period goals to fuel the rally.
Mason Marchment scored the go-ahead goal 11 seconds after Smith tied it. Yaroslav Askarov made 23 saves.
“The message was pretty clear: just go play, loosen up a little bit,” said San Jose coach Ryan Warsofsky. “I think we were trying to choke out a goal and choke out a win. We were gripping it really tight. You could see it, you could feel it.”
Elias Pettersson recorded an assist to extend his point streak to six games (two goals, five assists).
“There’s a lot of potential for our group, but we have to play a certain way,” Warsofsky said. “Proud of the group to come back in the third to win a hockey game.”
Sharks forward Filip Bystedt, 22, the No. 27 overall pick in the 2022 NHL draft, was minus-1 and had two shots on goal in his NHL debut.
When the Sharks and Senators met Oct. 22 in Ottawa, Collin Graf had a goal and an assist while Askarov made 41 saves. The Senators swept the season series a year ago, winning 3-2 in San Jose and 7-4 in Ottawa as Batherson scored twice in the latter match.
