After he received a beautiful pass to get sprung on a 2-on-1 by his defence partner Jordan Spence, Senators captain Thomas Chabot might not have been expecting the right-shot forward accompanying him to be Hayden Hodgson.
Hodgson saw a game-low 6:35 of time on ice, but after he received a pass from Chabot, he buried it past Logan Thompson’s blocker to put the Sens up 2-1 heading into the second intermission.
While a late goal in the third from Pierre-Luc Dubois ultimately pushed the game to overtime, Hodgson’s marker helped the Sens earn a point. It was the 30-year-old’s first goal in the NHL since his debut with the Philadelphia Flyers on March 24, 2022 — a span of 1,692 days.
“Yeah, it felt good,” said Hodgson. “It felt good, you know, to get that off my back, and in a tight game like that, I wish we would have had a better outcome, but it felt good.”
Chabot finished with two primary assists in the game, pushing the veteran to 10 points in 15 games on the year. He said it was nice to help Hodgson bury one after that length of a drought.
“Yeah, it's awesome. You love seeing [that], I was fired up for him. I mean, the guy takes his role to heart,” said Chabot.
“Whatever amount of minutes he's going to get, he's going to give you his 100 per cent. And to see him find the back of the net, obviously it’s exciting, and every guy on the bench is fired up for him.”
A team player through and through, Hodgson was more focused on the team’s effort and the result of the game than his goal.
“I thought we played well. You know, we started off a little slow, but I thought we got into our game, like [halfway] through the first period, and we played a great game. Played a great game, and it sucks the outcome,” said Hodgson.
He was also thinking about his teammate, Nick Cousins, who left the game late in the third period after taking a hard hit from Capitals defenceman Jakob Chychrun.
“You know, you don’t want to see that. He’s a heart-and-soul guy. He’s an unbelievable teammate, and it just took the life out of us. It just sucks to see.’
