The Ottawa Senators got their first home win of the season, but it came at a cost as they have lost one of their best forwards for around a month.

Bobby Ryan, who has a history of broken fingers over his Senators career, suffered yet another one last night blocking a shot, this time his right index finger. All you can say is "wow", that one player can suffer the same injury over and over. It is his sixth hand/finger injury that will make him miss games since November 2014. He has tried to use more padding in his gloves, but says it affects his feel. Well he can feel the sidelines for another month as the already thin Senators forward group loses a key piece.

Back to the game, a 6-3 win for the Senators, who nearly coughed it up as Craig Anderson bailed out Johnny Oduya with the score 4-3. Oduya was attempting a cross-zone pass in his own end, flubbed it right onto the stick of Mitch Marner. Marner might have been shocked by the gift, but his high shot appeared to get turned aside by Anderson, but might have just simply missed the net. The Senators went the other way and Derick Brassard scored a big insurance marker when the game felt like it might be slipping away.

Ottawa posted a 3-0 lead through 40 ugly minutes, with neither team getting much flow and it was definitely not an pretty two periods, which probably played into Ottawa's hands as they did a great job of shutting down the Leafs vaunted offense.

The third period was a different story as once again the Senators failed to keep their foot on the throat of their opponent and let the Leafs back in the game. The scored two pretty quick ones to narrow the Ottawa lead to one, but a quick answer by Mark Stone 7 seconds later proved to be the winner. William Nylander scored to get the Leafs back within one, but the Marner point blank miss followed shortly by Brassard's second of the game put the nail in the coffin. Stone matched Brassard's three point night with the empty netter.

Erik Karlsson had 3 assists for the second straight game and he has made up more than half of the head start he gave the field in terms of defensemen scoring. He is now tied for 16th, 5 points behind Alex Pietrangelo and Shayne Gostisbehere.

Ryan Dzingel and Nate Thompson also scored for Ottawa, with Thompson's goal mouth icebreaker being his first as a Senators, a marker that also saw Logan Brown earn an assist for his first NHL point. Brown played a season-high 10:49, thanks to the injury to Ryan and previously Zack Smith that has left the lineup perilously thin.

It was Craig Anderson's 300th appearance in a Senators uniform, and he got the win to continue his recent personal dominance of the Maple Leafs (8-0-1 in last 9 meetings since April 2014).

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