The Ottawa Senators look to extend the pronounced losing streak of a second straight opponent on Saturday afternoon when they host the struggling Chicago Blackhawks.
The Senators handed the reeling Pittsburgh Penguins a seventh consecutive regulation or overtime setback on Thursday with a decisive 4-0 victory in Ottawa.
Captain Brady Tkachuk scored two goals and Linus Ullmark made 25 saves for the Senators, who have posted three wins in their last four games overall.
David Perron added a goal to record his 800th career point and Claude Giroux also tallied for Ottawa.
“We’re happy about the way every guy played,” Tkachuk said, per the Ottawa Citizen. “We were hard to play against, and we didn’t give up too much. Everybody was really focused and dialed in.”
Drake Batherson notched two assists and Tim Stutzle had one while playing in his 400th career NHL game.
“That was a great team win. Top-to-bottom,” Senators coach Travis Green said. “We played pretty solid. We talked about the 200-foot game defensively and offensively. The guys were ready to play.”
Stutzle, who has recorded four goals and six assists during his five-game point streak, leads the team in goals (15) and points (34). His 19 assists are tied with Batherson and defenseman Jake Sanderson for the team lead.
Batherson had two assists and Stutzle scored and set up a goal in the Senators’ 7-3 setback at Chicago on Oct. 28.
Connor Bedard recorded his first career hat trick and added an assist in that game for the Blackhawks.
Unfortunately for Chicago, life without Bedard — the team leader in goals (19), assists (25) and points (44) — hasn’t gone well since the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 NHL Draft sustained an upper-body injury last Friday.
The Blackhawks have lost four in a row overall and mustered just three total goals in the last three games without Bedard.
“I just thought too many guys had like their C game,” Chicago coach Jeff Blashill said after Thursday’s 4-1 setback to the Montreal Canadiens. “You’re not going to have your A-plus game every night, but you’ve got to find a way to make sure when you don’t have that you have a B-plus game. Not necessarily even the mentality of how you play, just the actual level which you play at. So, that’s part of the process of making sure that we figure that out.”
Step one would be putting more shots on goal. The Blackhawks registered just 15 on net Thursday, marking their second-lowest total of the season.
“You can’t pass up a shot in a scoring area,” Blashill said. “We literally passed it out of a scoring area into a non-scoring area. That’s nonsensical. We’re going to have to … make sure we have much more of a shooting mentality and create chaos off the shots.”
Frank Nazar scored in the previous encounter with Ottawa and snapped a 21-game goal drought on Thursday.
The Blackhawks have been outscored by a 27-9 margin while losing six of their last seven games.
–Field Level Media
