At times it looked like the Senators had suddenly flipped the switch in the understanding of Guy Boucher's system. They built up a 2-0 lead on first period goals from Ryan Dzingel and Zack Smith. The home side was severely limiting the shots and chances against, and Mike Hoffman was singled out in a goalmouth scrum, and Jeff Petry scored late in the second to bring the Canadiens withing a goal.

After Arturri Lehkonen scored his first career goal by rolling a puck up Craig Anderson's arm, over his shoulder and down his back early in the third, Ottawa had a magnificent opportunity to re-take the lead and snuff the Canadiens' momentum. A 1:48 5-on-3 oportunity was blown without a real significant shot on goal and then Dion Phaneuf took a penalty that the Senators killed off, but moments after Phaneuf stepped on the ice, Petry scored his second of the night on a blast from the point through traffic to give Montreal its first lead of the game.

It started to look like last season, where Ottawa had a superior record when they were outshot to that when they outshot the opposition, but it was a late goal from an unexpected source that gained them a point and forced extra time. A nice three way passing play between Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Dzingel and Tom Pyatt was capped off by Pyatt with just 2:33 left on the clock.

Overtime saw multiple chances, but Anderson and Al Montoya held firm, sending the game to a shootout. After Kyle Turris and Alexander Radulov exchanged goals, Erik Karlsson scored in the 4th round and David Desharnais fanned on his deke attempt and failed to put the puck in goal resulting in the Senators' win and moving to 2-0 on the season.

Senators' head coach Guy Boucher was relatively happy with the effort, holding the Canadiens to 24 shots and dominating the faceoff circle. Unlike the opener against the Leafs where the offense came from the expected sources, it was the role players like Smith, Dzingel, Pyatt and Chris Wideman who made the offensive contributions.

It was an all around better effort from the Senators than the Leafs game, especially in their own end. Karlsson played more than 30 minutes, while the third pairing of Wideman and Mark Borowiecki played less than 12 minutes each, Borowiecki playing less than 3 minutes after the second period. That opens the door for Thomas Chabot to enter the lineup, with Phil Varone (and his less than seven minutes of ice time) the obvious choice to come out and let the team go with the seven defensemen/eleven forward strategy Boucher toyed with in the preseason.

The Senators play their first set of back to backs starting Monday in Detroit and then back home Tuesday to host Arizona.

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