Three Thoughts: An afternoon of firsts as Sens beat Lightning
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Brady Tkachuk scored his first NHL hat-trick while Anton Forsberg recorded his first career NHL shutout to power the Sens to victory over Tampa Bay, while once again, the team's top line asserted its dominance, as Three Thoughts examines.
An afternoon of firsts
On a night that he scored the first hat-trick of his NHL career, Tkachuk was quick to deflect the attention to his goaltender.
Between the pipes, Forsberg, in his 66th game, collected the first shutout of his NHL career with a 25-save performance in the victory over the Lightning.
"I didn't know it was Forsy's first career shutout so that's probably more exciting," Tkachuk said. "He's been great for us during this stretch of wins we've had. He's been holding the fort down and he was awesome tonight."
Tkachuk had recorded six multi-goal games in his NHL career before last night. On Saturday, he got on the scoreboard 3:32 into the second period with a power play marker as he outwaited Brian Elliott before sliding the puck five-hole to push the Sens' lead to 2-0. He had his second of the night 1:59 later as he got a slight tip on Thomas Chabot's blast from the blue line on the man advantage.
He completed the hatty with 3:43 to play in regulation as he chipped the puck past Victor Hedman into the empty-net. It was the third Sens hat-trick this season after Drake Batherson and Zach Sanford.
"On top of the fact that he's mean, he plays with emotion, now he's making the right plays, heavy plays and smart plays," Smith said of Tkachuk. "He's driving us right now up front."
In the process, he became the first Sens captain to score three goals in a game since Jason Spezza on Oct. 15, 2013, and it was just the 10th time in franchise history a natural hat-trick was scored. Tkachuk was the first Senator to score a hat-trick against the Bolts since Milan Michalek on March 6, 2012.
As for Forsberg, he became the 20th Senators goaltender to record a shutout as Ottawa blanked Tampa Bay for the eighth time in franchise history. It was also the first time the Lightning had been shutout this season.
"It's really nice to get a shutout for the confidence," Forsberg said. "Obviously, the most important part is that we played a really solid game for 60 minutes and we have to keep building from there.
"But] it's a great memory to have. Obviously, I've been waiting for a while. It just feels good."
**First line shines again**
It's not the first time this week
[words have been written
about the dominance of the Senators' top line of Batherson, Josh Norris and Tkachuk.
But is it ever deserved.
"At the end of the day, that's a line that could be good for the next 10-12 years," Smith said. "I think it's a real line; they can check, they can score and at this point I'm trying to play them against everyone's best line and they're getting better every day.
"If I'm an Ottawa Senators fan, I'm excited to watch these three play together for a long time."
In addition to Tkachuk's hat-trick, Batherson had three assists while Norris had the opening goal of the game. This season, the trio have combined for 31 goals and 64 points.
The Sens have won four of its last five games and it's no coincidence that it's come at a time when the team's top line has taken it up a notch. Over that stretch, they've recorded three game-winners and 23 points.
"We're clicking right now but I know we have a couple more levels to hit," Tkachuk said. "We're confident in ourselves and we just want to play the right way individually. I think what we preach to each other is we just want to be our best individually to almost not let each other down. We don't want to disappoint each other.
"I think our motivation is that we want to be the best for one another."
Special teams dominates
The Senators dominated the special teams Saturday afternoon.
They scored twice on the power play courtesy of a pair of Tkachuk goals and the penalty kill was perfect, killing off all five shorthanded situations they faced.
"When you win 2-0 on the special teams, you should win most nights," Smith said. "As good as our power play was, it's as good as our penalty kill has been."
The Sens have not conceded a power play goal in three games, a season high. In that stretch, they've seen their penalty kill percentage rise from 72.9 per cent to 75.3.
"We were on the gas [tonight]," Connor Brown said. "We weren't thinking, we were just playing, we were on our toes and making them make plays and winning our puck battles which is huge. We were well prepared and executed well."
As for the power play, it's buried four goals in its last four games and five in its last six. Batherson's eight assists on the man advantage lead the team while surprisingly, Tkachuk's two power play goals Saturday were his first power play points of the season.
