And by rust, I don't mean Bryan.

The concern heading into Thursday night's tilt with the Penguins was the travel and lack of game action over the last couple of weeks, and that seemed to contribute to the Senators' lackluster performance against the defending Stanley Cup Champion Penguins.

Not that the Penguins effort will show up on their highlight reels either, but a couple of deft deflections past Craig Anderson turned out to be the difference in Pittsburgh's 3-1 win at Canadian Tire Centre.

Aside from a first period power play where Matt Murray robbed Mike Hoffman with a desperation dive to keep the game scoreless, Ottawa didn't generate much offensively through the first 50 minutes, while Patrick Hornqvist and Jake Guentzel staked their team out to a 2-1 lead.

Ryan Dzingel and Jean-Gabriel Pageau combined for a nice set up and finish to get some life into the team and the building with nine and a half minutes left, but they couldn't get the equalizer and Riley Sheahan finished it off with the empty netter.

Inactivity arguably played a role, with the Senators playing just two games in the previous 12 days, and they were back to back in Sweden. Now they are back and have a game under their belts and can get back to some semblance of normalcy, although they are one game away from playing a stretch of 10 out of 11 games on the road.


As for this one, you definitely expect some offense, but with Bobby Ryan skating for the first time with Matt Duchene in actual game action, it might take some time for them to gel, and Ryan hadn't played in almost a month.

Ottawa did a solid job holding the Pens' stars to a lone assist, by Sidney Crosby on the Sheahan empty netter, but Pittsburgh didn't give Ottawa much either in what was a pretty dull game all around, considering these were the Eastern Conference finalists.

Ottawa looks to head out on the road on a winning note, as they host the Coyotes on Saturday afternoon. Despite the struggles in Arizona, the lowly Coyotes showed Montreal last night that you can't take any team lightly in this league and Ottawa has a tendency to play to the level of their competition.

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