The Ottawa Senators have yet to pick up a win on their swing through the Pacific Division, but did manage to pick up an important point on Thursday night in Los Angeles. The Sens rallied from a 5-1 deficit to send the game to overtime before falling to the Kings, 6-5.
“Yeah, obviously you don't want to ever get down 5-1 in a game, but I think between that second and third, there was a lot of good discussion in the room,” said Shane Pinto on Friday afternoon in San Jose.
“Talking about our character, I think Greener kind of harped on that going into the third, and I thought we responded well. Obviously got a good point there, but just shows a lot, shows that we’re capable. But yeah, we can't get down 5-1 like that, ever again. But hopefully, we just continue that play that we had in the third and bring it to [Saturday].”
The Senators finished the game with nine forwards, after Andre Burakovsky was injured and Hayden Hodgson and Nick Cousins were ejected. The short bench responded, scoring four goals in 11 minutes.
“I think [it] just showed that everyone could play with everyone. I think we have a bunch of good hockey players, and we all tried to figure it out as the game went on. And you know, lost some guys there, but a lot of guys stepped up. Interesting line combos, but I think we all did pretty well, and it ended up going pretty good,” said Pinto.
“I think there was a pretty common theme of just, kind of, getting into our game, just chipping the puck in, forechecking their D and getting the pucks back and converting on that. I think that was most of our goals. And you know, resulted in some penalties as well, and then we scored on the power play. It's not complicated, we’ve just got to get to it early [Saturday] and do it the whole game.”
The Sens and the Sharks will be facing off for the second time in nine days. A week ago Thursday, Ottawa outshot San Jose 43-28 but were shut down by a good performance from Sharks goalie Yaroslav Askarov and fell 6-2 (with two empty-netters).
