It wasn't the prettiest way to win a game, but the Senators downed the Devils to come away with an important 3-1 win and two points Saturday night to stop the bleeding of a three game losing streak. Ottawa got goals from Bobby Ryan and Derick Brassard, both on deflections in front of Keith Kincaid and Zack Smith sent the hometown faithful home happy with the insurance goal to assure the win as well as a Big Mac with his empty netter in the Big Mac Minute.
Each goalie faced 30 shots, and neither could be blamed for the ones that went in. All goals scored were the 5th of the season by the scorer, including John Moore's lone goal for the Devils that had eyes through a lot of traffic and got past Mike Condon to tie the game at 1 in the first period.
Chris Neil's first period fight with Luke Gadzic put him over the 2,500 penalty minute mark, the 22nd player to do so in NHL history. He also joins former Devil Ken Daneyko as the only two players to play 1,000 games and have 2,500 penalty minutes with the same team.
The comedy moment of the night was provided by Mark Borowiecki, coming off his two game suspension. He lost a blade from his skate in his own end and played a good 30 seconds floundering around on one foot as the Devils buzzed around the Ottawa zone. Fortunately for Ottawa the Devils couldn't cash in.
And just to show the inconsistency of NHL officiating, a third period scuffle between Marc Methot and Nick Lappin following a hit by Methot resulted in a double roughing minor for Lappin and a single minor for Methot. That was the right call despite both players dropping their gloves, unlike the San Jose game where Kyle Turris got an instigator and a misconduct for going after Marc-Edouard Vlasic in almost a carbon-copy play where no punches were thrown. You could argue that missing their top centre and leading goal-scorer for almost the entire third period cost the Senators the game on Wednesday night.
So with that one in the books, the Senators travel to Brooklyn tonight to face the Islanders in the second half of the back to back. Another one the Senators should win on paper, with the Isles sitting in the basement of the Eastern Conference.
After getting pulled the last time he started in back to back nights, I would expect Condon will get the night off and Andrew Hammond will get a chance between the pipes for the Senators.
The Islanders have lost their last 4 games, garnering just a single point in that time, a 3-2 overtime loss in their last outing in Buffalo on Friday night.
New York is currently employing a three goalie system, with each of Jean-Francois Berube, Jaroslav Halak and Thomas Greiss each seeing action in at least two of their last 5 games.
If there was a good time for Mike Hoffman to get suspended (and there really isn't) it would be when the Senators are set to face the bottom two teams in the conference. They managed without him in the first game, and this is another big two points they will have to do so again Sunday. Zack Smith did step up and had two points in that coach Guy Boucher called his best game of the season.
Ryan also now has points in three straight games as he looks to rescue a season that was dreadful over the first 1/3.