Senators with short hands fight, but lose to kings

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Kings 2, Senators 0

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The Ottawa Senators put a spin on that great Eight Men Out baseball book and movie Thursday night.

With COVID-19 running rampant throughout the locker room, it was effectively a Nine Men Out case when the Senators lost 2-0 to the Los Angeles Kings at the Canadian Tire Center, extending their losing streak to six games.

Considering the circumstances in which they are apparently losing new players to the virus by the hour, defender Nikita Zaitsev was ruled out an hour before the puck dropped due to a positive test, joining goalkeeper Matt Murray and winger Alex Formenton, who were forced to stay out of it. in the morning, the senators needed to find a way to steal a victory.

Kings goalkeeper Jonathan Quick didn’t let it happen, looking like his old star self as he made 34 saves (with the help of a triplet of poles) to make the shutout and keep the senators at bay. It was even more impressive considering Quick went down and appeared after Tim Stuetzle hit his head in the second period.

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The surprising Kings have now won seven straight games.

Filip Gustavsson was also sharp on the Senators’ net, making 34 saves, but was unable to do anything on Anze Kopitar’s power play goal in the second period, a shot that was deflected by Senators defender Michael Del Zotto. , on the way to the net.

“Quick is the difference tonight and they didn’t even beat (Gustavsson),” Senators coach DJ Smith said. “One falls off a skateboard and the other falls off one knee, so it’s unfortunate, when we’re short-staffed, but I thought our guys couldn’t play much harder.”

The Senators pushed hard for the tying goal during the third period, coming that close on a late power play, but Quick was too quick and had the luck of the iron behind him.

With time running out, Andreas Athanasiou provided insurance for the Kings, deflecting a shot from Alex Edler that passed Gustavsson.

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There were bigger questions for the NHL involved in this one, with Connor Brown, Austin Watson, Victor Mete, Dylan Gambrell, Josh Brown and Nick Holden also with COVID-19. Forcing both the senators and their opponents, who risk being exposed to a tainted locker room, is beyond ridiculous, but the NHL determined it was still up for grabs.

Ultimately, the senators donned what amounted to a boot camp-like roster, with a team calling from Belleville this week that included Egor Sokolov, Parker Kelly, Scott Sabourin, Erik Brannstrom, Dillon Heatherington and Lassi Thomson, and not they did it. Let a pity party be established.

The game marked the NHL debut of Thomson, the Senators’ first-round pick in 2019, hot on the heels of Sokolov’s first NHL game in Tuesday’s 3-2 loss to the Boston Bruins. Heatherington was playing his first NHL game in three seasons.

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“Lassi Thomson was phenomenal,” Smith said. “It seemed like he had played in the league for a long time. He made plays, he defended. I thought that Hetherington, by not playing, not even practicing with us, did everything that could be asked of him. There were a lot of really good efforts. “

As bad luck and coincidence would have it, it was the first meeting between the Senators and the Kings since March 2020, which turned out to be the last NHL game before the league was completely shut down.

Apart from COVID-19, senators and kings were going in different directions before the puck fell.

While the Senators were on a five-game losing streak, dating back to a win over the Dallas Stars on October 29, the Kings came to Ottawa at the top, including a 3-2 overtime win over the Montreal. Canadiens on Tuesday.

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The Kings, on the cusp of a playoff spot in the Western Conference, have been one of the NHL’s early-season surprise teams.

Given the state of the Senators’ lineup and with Murray out once again and with Anton Forsberg battling a non-COVID-19 disease, attention once again turned to Gustavsson, who has been on a yo-yo journey between Ottawa and Belleville throughout the season.

Gustavsson, who entered the game with two of the senators with three wins at the net (Forsberg has the other), was under pressure to do what he can to rescue his insufficient lineup. With Murray gone for at least 10 days, Gustavsson knows he will be around for a while. We have a busy schedule ahead of us, with games Saturday against the Pittsburgh Penguins and Sunday against the Calgary Flames at the Canadian Tire Center.

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“We all try to be better by some percentages,” Gustavsson said. “I think that is also natural. Obviously, I want to do what Quick did today and have a shutout. “

It’s routine and the notion of putting off future games isn’t entirely out of the question, but on Thursday night, the focus was on the task at hand, trying to find answers against the Kings.

Of course, with the way senators fared last week, they apparently can’t go more than 10 minutes without losing another body. Defender Artem Zub left the game with an upper body injury in the first period after a collision with the Kings’ Carl Grundstrom.

To their credit, the senators kept things simple in the first period without scoring, without creating much or giving up much. Paul hit the post with 7:30 left in the first period. Senators’ workhorse Thomas Chabot also stopped a strange man with a nosedive.

Beyond Quick’s work, there were other reasons senators shook their heads. Stuetzle remains scoreless, blocked Thursday by the posts. And then there was Parker Kelly, who missed the net while trying to hit a three-on-one break in the second period.

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