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Le sigh...The Montreal Canadiens simply have the Senators number. In bad seasons like these, the one thing that can be fun is beating rival teams like Toronto and Montreal. The Senators have done quite well against the Maple Leafs over the past few seasons, but with the Canadiens it has been a different story.
In the three contests between the two teams this season, Montreal has two regulation wins, and Ottawa has an overtime win. Over their past 10 meetings, Ottawa's record is a putrid 2-7-1 vs. Montreal. It hasn't been very pretty, and tonight was no exception. I was unable to catch the game tonight, so I won't be able to discuss much at length. However, I will talk about the last 10 games between these two teams.
This stretch dates back to March 18th of 2017, the first of three games against the Canadiens in a week span (where they lost all three):
(this table does not include the most recent loss)
Ottawa did have that 3-0 win in the Centennial Classic mixed in there, but there hasn't been success at all recently. And sure, these things are cyclical because in the previous nine regular season matchups before this, the Senators had won seven of them. Obviously if I include those games in the sample, it looks a lot more normal. But if we focus on the
most recent results, Montreal has been dominant. In these 10 games, they have outscored the Senators 38-21...Pas bien.
I can say with 100% certainty that the most fun I have on Sens Twitter is when everyone is joining in to bash the Canadiens because it gets everybody involved and it makes it feel like a real community. It's all in good fun, and you can bet that the Habs fanbase loves to do the exact same thing in the other direction. The only problem is, the opportunities for Senators fans to do that (during games) have been few and far between of late.
The game itself looks like it was more of the same, as Montreal outshot Ottawa 43-21, including a 19-3 advantage in the third period despite being ahead. The overall shot attempts were 72-38, so almost twice as many as Ottawa. To me, it looks like there were only two positives from the game: Mark Stone and Colin White, who both had one goal and one assist. Stone continued his fantastic play with an unstoppable shot off the faceoff, and White scored another powerplay goal to give him 18 points in 28 games on the season. White has looked much quicker this season, and barring an injury, he should be able to eclipse 40 or even 50 points, which would certainly be a success in my mind.
Other than that though, it was another disappointing night not being able to beat the Canadiens. It's hard to be upset with any sort of loss this season, but wins against their two biggest rivals are obviously the most satisfying, which makes the losses more frustrating.
Besides the score, there was more bad news as both Matt Duchene and Bobby Ryan left the game with injuries:
The Senators are being extremely vague about what these injuries even entail and how long they will be out for (if at all), but either one of them missing time is a blow to the offense, specifically Duchene. It would be the cruelest fate in the world to see him hurt until late in the season, not got traded at the deadline because of the injury, and then walk in free agency. But that's worst case scenario, and we don't even know how many games he will miss yet. Plus the talk around him and the team has been quite positive the last few weeks at least.
The next game for the Senators is Saturday at home at 7 EST vs. the Pittsburgh Penguins.
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