David Rittich stopped all 29 shots he faced during action, only getting beat by a Jean-Gabriel Pageau penalty shot as he backstopped the Flames to a much needed 2-1 win over the Senators.

Sam Bennett opened the scoring on a goal in the first 5 minutes, grabbing a rebound on a goalmouth scramble and overpowering Erik Karlsson for the puck and sliding it past Mike Condon. Guy Boucher challenged the goal with Sean Monahan in the crease, but as has been the case on more than a couple of occassions this season it was a hail mary, unsuccessful and cost them their time out before the ice was really dry.

The score remained that way until the third, when Curtis Lazar drew all the attention in a non-threatening area, including that of Karlsson who let Matt Stajan get in all alone behind him for the easy tap in on the pass from the former Senator. That made it 2-0 and although Pageau got it within 1 on a nice penalty shot after some good advice from Matt Duchene, the Senators could not get the equalizer.

For a lot of the season you could point a finger at sub-par goaltending as a reason for the Senators' struggles, but plays like that Stajan goal show just how much Karlsson's game has fallen off, injury or not, from where it was last season. That wasn't a play where his ankle didn't allow him to get there, the fact is that he never even looked.

Karlsson has gone from being the best defenseman of his generation to being Marc-Andre Bergeron in one year. That is why I don't blame the Senators for exploring trade options, because he might get back to Norris level, but then again he might not, and that is a franchise-sized gamble that if the Senator lose there will be no recovering from. The ability to bounce back from trading their captain in a down cycle will be much easier than it could be if they sign him to an 8 year, nine figure contract extension and he is a 60 point, -25 defenseman going forward. And that is taking into account the fact that he has looked much better of late.

The state of the team right now shows just how good he was last season, that he made average goaltending look better than it was. Karlsson has the ability to take over a game, and the number of times he has really done that this season pales in comparison to last, and that is partially the reason that I think this is slowly becoming less Erik Karlsson's team and more Mark Stone's team.

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