Mike Condon played a heck of a game, but a single brain cramp late in the contest allowed the Kings to tie the game and eventually go on to win in a shootout.
You aren't going to win many games when Tom Pyatt and Nate Thompson are your best and most visible players, but the Senators came close to making that a reality, but in the end they couldn't cash in on their chances to extend their lead and it cost them.
Condon played the puck behind the net and his pass to Johnny Oduya was picked off by Adrian Kempe, and Kempe beat a scrambling goalie and tucked it home to force overtime with under 2 minutes left. Condon made 41 stops on 43 shots, but owned his mistake, saying after the game that Oduya had communicated for Condon to reverse the puck, but he just passed it toward the friendly voice.
Alec Martinez broke the ice early with a point shot off a faceoff that seemed to dip past Condon, just 24 seconds in, and between that and the Kempe goal the Ottawa netminder was stellar. He was also the beneficiary of a couple of misses point blank from the Kings shooters on seemingly open nets, a Drew Shore miss sticking out in my mind.
Dion Phaneuf tied the game with a knuckler that dipped in front of Darcy Kuemper before the game was seven minutes old, and Thompson gave them the lead 6:36 into the third period with the teams first shorthanded goal of the season. It looked like that might be enough until the seemingly harmless shoot-in that was in the net before you could blink. Playing without two of their top six forwards (Bobby Ryan and Zack Smith) showed, as did playing with just 11 forwards. Injuries aren't an excuse though, as the Kings were also without Jeff Carter, perhaps their best forward, and if not he is 1A to Anze Kopitar.
The Senators seem to be falling into the old trap of allowing more shots than they are taking, after starting out the season on the plus side of that category. They have allowed more than 30 shots in four of their last five games, after not allowing more than 30 in any of their first 4. Quality shots or not, they add up and the slim margin for error for the Senators play with doesn't allow for many bad goals.
As for the shootout itself, Mike Cammalleri and Kempe both scored very nice goals on dekes that Condon didn't have much of a chance one, while at the other end Kyle Turris and Mark Stone made Kuemper's night end on a relatively easy note with shots that didn't have much gusto to them.
Still, coming away with a point against one of the teams that is playing the best hockey in the league is a bit of a positive, even if the way they lost it isn't great. Whether you like the system of a loser point or not, it is what it is and despite losing 5 games so far this season, the Senators have managed to salvage a point on four of those occasions, even if three of them came as a result of coughing up third period leads. They won't take that next step until they can figure out how to close games more consistently and turn 1 point into 2.