The Ottawa Senators took care of business on Tuesday night against the last-place Vancouver Canucks and will look to do the same on Wednesday night in New York City against the Rangers, who enter the game last in the Eastern Conference.
Though the Senators threw 40 shots against Kevin Lankinen — tied for their second most of this season — only two made their way past the Swedish netminder on Tuesday night. Despite that, it was a start-to-finish effort for the Senators.
It took 15 seconds of game time and about a minute of real time, for defenders Jordan Spence and Artem Zub to beat Lankinen’s blocker late in the first period, the first time two Senators defenders had scored in the same game since Dec. 2 (when Zub and Jake Sanderson scored against Montreal).
“Yeah, I think so,” said Spence when asked if it was the best 60-minute effort the team had put forth lately.
“Obviously, there’s some things that we can do better in the [second and third] periods, but I think our first period was one of the better periods in the season. I think just with our work ethic, winning puck battles, and keeping our identity, I think we just have to keep doing that.”
Ottawa’s fourth line of Nick Cousins, David Perron, and Lars Eller weren’t on the ice for a goal for, but did dominate play while they were on the ice. In 8:52 of time on ice together, they combined for 10 scoring chances for and zero against per Natural Stat Trick.
“Yeah, they were great, I met with a couple of them [on Tuesday] morning. I talked to Lars in particular about his ice time and trying to give him more minutes,” said Travis Green after the game.
“And normally it goes hand-in-hand, when you play well, you get more minutes. With back-to-back games, knew that line had to give us some minutes, and they were excellent tonight. I was happy with them. It’s that time of year where there’s a lot of games, we’re going to need to use all four lines, three veteran guys that played well tonight.”
“I think that was definitely a step in the right direction, I think we could have got a couple more there in the first and second, we had a lot of good looks,” said Cousins about the team’s game.
“You know, they get one in the third, but I liked our composure, nobody was panicking, still making plays and playing down in their end. So it’s definitely a step in the right direction for sure, Leevi made some really important saves in the third, but it’s just one game, got to follow it up [against New York].”
