Ottawa Senators Postgame: Sens Fall to Lightning, Again

For the second time in the last three nights, the Tampa Bay Lightning have beaten the Ottawa Senators. This time it was 5-1 Lightning, as the Senators couldn’t overcome the lack of offense with both Josh Norris and Shane Pinto out because of injuries. In what was a golden opportunity for the Sens to increase their lead in the standings over the Lightning, the back-to-back losses now puts the two teams in a tie with 62 points, and Tampa Bay has two games in hand. Let’s dive into the details.

READ MORE: Appreciating the Ottawa Senators Defensive Play

Forsberg In, Ullmark Out

Linus Ullmark has now been back for three games after his long injury. He’s only played in one of those games. With just one game to go before the 4 Nations Face-Off, I would expect Ullmark to play that game. After that, it’ll be interesting to see what the plan is with Ullmark. If I’m the Senators, I wouldn’t want him to even go to what is essentially a four team exhibition tournament. After that, though, you have to wonder how much Ullmark will play down the stretch. He was a split-start goalie in Boston, and he hasn’t been able to handle the workload of a true number one this year. That puts a lot of pressure on Anton Forsberg. He was solid tonight in the loss, but he’s not exactly a goalie that inspires confidence as anything more than a true backup.

Offensive Issues

The reality with the Senators offense is they don’t have a Kucherov type of player. Stützle is great, but the him and Kucherov have been separated by nearly 100 points since the start of last season. That’s why injuries seem to hit the Senators so much harder. Without Pinto and Norris, it was obvious how much of a struggle it was to generate offense tonight. They had a few good looks that didn’t go in, but most of their shots were pretty easy for Vasilevskiy to handle. With just 11 forwards in the lineup, they were forced to play some guys a lot more than they’d like to. That’s where you hope your power play can come through offensively, but the Sens weren’t clicking there either, going 0-3.

Additional Notes

When Tkachuk went down in pain in the third period, I just about turned my TV off. Thankfully, he came back to play pretty soon after. In the Hamonic versus Matinpalo debate that has peaked the interest of many Sens fans, both ended up in the lineup tonight. Hamonic played 9:52 while Matinpalo played 5:35. Neither had much of an impact. Let’s try to end with a positive. Elevated to bigger minutes tonight, Michael Amadio had a solid game. He’s now scored three goals in his last four games after scoring just two the entire season prior to that.