It is pretty amazing how different garnering a single point can make you feel. After losing to the Rangers in a shootout on Saturday left a pretty good impression, the Senators have to feel pretty fortunate about the single point they "earned" against the Wings and have to be disappointed with their overall effort.
The Senators were in a pretty giving mood early on, as Craig Anderson gifted a goal to Dylan Larkin to open the scoring just before the 10 minute mark. It was yet another case of Anderson mis-playing a shot coming from below the goal line. As much flak as Jonathan Bernier got for allowing a goal from centre ice on Sunday night, at least it would have been recorded as a shot on goal. Larkin's goal was almost worse because it wasn't even a real shot on goal and it ended up going in. That "shot" going in the back of the net is purely on Anderson and his seemingly constant inability to track pucks behind him. Erik Karlsson might have missed the hip check on the play, but he at least forced Larkin wide and low to an extremely low-percentage scoring area, but that doesn't matter when teams know that Anderson has a habit of badly misplaying such occurrences and probably have it in their game plan to shoot from those areas because the odds of something happening are higher with him than most (if not all) other goalies.
Allowing that goal, the first goal of the game to a team that is struggling to score, when your team has been almost constantly playing from behind on home ice, is absolutely unacceptable and took the steam out of the team and the crowd.
Anderson did recover pretty well allowing his team to get back into it and earn a point, but such is the conundrum when assessing Anderson's play. He didn't have much chance on Nyquist's 2-0 goal just under 2 minutes later, but falling in a 2-0 hole is tough to climb out of. It seems like there is a bad goal against him at least every other game. The good is very good, but the bad is horrendous, and such is the "what you see is what you get with Anderson and it can be very frustrating. Any time a goalie has a sub-.900 save percentage in a particular game, your chances to win aren't very good (Unless it is a Nashville-Ottawa game).
Bobby Ryan was pretty much invisible for the whole game until his highlight reel goal that tied it up out of nowhere with time getting short. That has kind of been the Senators season in a nutshell. It has been pretty much one step forward, one step back.
On the bright side, Mike Hoffman broke out of a goal-less drought with a cannon on a suddenly hot power play that has been driven largely by the second unit. Chris Wideman also scored for the third time in 4 games.
Other things on the negative side of the ledger, Patrick Wiercioch was a train wreck in his own end, and all three Senators blowing the zone in overtime while Detroit had possession of the puck in the neutral zone as a miscue that allowed Tomas Tatar's breakaway winner.
Detroit hadn't scored more than 2 goals in a game since the last time they were in Ottawa more than 2 weeks ago (a span of 6 games), and for a team that was averaging about 25 shots per game so far this season, Ottawa allowed them to direct 37 on Anderson.
Still, a point is a point no matter how it is earned, and that is a pretty important point despite the fact they didn't have their best game by any means.
Two points is better than one (stating the obvious) and the Senators will try to net that on Thursday when they host the struggling last place Columbus Blue Jackets.