OK so maybe the title is more alliterative than completely telling the whole story, but the bottom line is the Senators took a game they needed to win, and they did it in regulation which is almost as important given the race they are in.

The Senators moved four points up on Boston while still holding two games in hand, and are now eight points clear of Toronto, who is the 9th place team in the conference and the first outsider in both the Division and Wild Card races.

It also sets up a big set of ahead starting a week from Saturday with 3 games in 8 days against the Montreal Canadiens, a stretch that could determine first place in the division. But that is in the future and the Senators still have business to take care of before they can focus on what will be a great atmosphere for the Senators and Habs.

Alex Burrows assisted on Derick Brassard's game opener and sealed the 4-2 win with an empty netter to make it 4 points in his first 3 games as a Senator. The Senators were rolling early on, as Jean-Gabriel Pageau made it 2-0 before the game was four minutes old.

As the Senators do, they allowed their opponent to get back into the game, as Patrice Bergeron's turnaround shot after a weak clearing attempt from Cody Ceci was picked off by Torey Krug to get them back in the game before the first was over.

Allowing the goal so late in the period didn't dampen the Senators' enthusiasm, and the team took turns dominating stretches but Craig Anderson and Tuukka Rask held firm. Each team's top sniper, Mike Hoffman and Brad Marchand, exchanged power play goals withing a minute and a half or so in the middle of the third as the Bruins wouldn't go away, until Burrows finally nailed it down with 50 seconds remaining.

As you would expect, it was a pretty even game, with just 2 shots difference and 3 shot attempts separating the teams over the course of the night. It wasn't particularly nasty, but intense and relatively clean for a game involving Marchand and Burrows.

Anderson was a bit better than Rask on the night, and Ottawa did a nice job for the most part of creating traffic in front of the Bruins goaltender (Pageau's goal was a deflection of Dion Phaneuf's point shot for example).

My travels on the weekend forced me to miss the Colorado and Columbus games, so this was the first time I was able to see the new-look roster, and it would be tough not to like what I saw. Ottawa's newfound depth and ability to roll 4 lines (not one Senator played less than 12 minutes) in a close game is already serving them well. The additions might have raised an eyebrow in terms of not paying the price to add a really big name at the trade deadline, but have made Ottawa a tougher team to play against and players know their roles and are doing their jobs. Now, most of the players are slotted accordingly instead of playing above their depth as some had been doing previously. The hitters are hitting, the scorers are scoring, goaltenders are making saves and Erik Karlsson is quite simply doing everything and doing it well.

Now that they have shown that they can win the games against tougher opponents (beating Columbus and Boston back to back) they need to show that they can duplicate that performance and compete level against the weaker teams. That is because they head out on the road and face the three bottom-feeders of the Western Conference on a three game road trip that starts Wednesday night in Dallas followed by a back to back in Arizona on Thursday and capping it off with a third game in four nights in Denver against the Avalanche.

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