Adam Gaudette made his Sens debut during the game while the result also got the Senators to the 20-game mark of the season, as Three Thoughts examines.
Gaudette debuts
After being claimed on waivers Saturday, Adam Gaudette made an impact on the scoresheet in his Sens debut.
He spoke Tuesday after his first practice with the team about contributing on the power play and he did that Wednesday, firing in a one-timer from his favoured spot in the left circle.
"It was definitely good to get on the scoresheet," Gaudette said. "I got the first one out of the way but now I need to go out and not think and just play hockey and play my game to be able to help this team win."
Defensively, Gaudette was a -2 and played a team low 8:20, 2:30 of which came on the man advantage. He went 1-for-2 in the faceoff circle as he played his first game since Nov. 9.
"Nerves settled in a little bit," Gaudette said. "It's been about a month since I played last and I didn't feel quite right out there but I got the first one out of the way."
4-on-4 hurts Sens
The Senators gave up two power play goals Wednesday but perhaps more devastating was the fact they conceded twice during 4-on-4 play at key moments of the game.
More critically, the first of those two goals came with 28.7 seconds left in the second and gave the Canucks a 3-1 advantage after 40 minutes.
"We're in the fight but we give up one with limited time left on the clock, 4-on-4, at the end of the second period," Sens head coach D.J. Smith. "If you're in the game, 2-1 in the third period, you've got the other team thinking 'uh-oh' but we just let them off the hook."
Bo Horvat would push Vancouver's lead to 4-1 early into the third as he was open in the slot to also score while each team played a man short.
The four goals the Sens have given up during 4-on-4 lead the NHL. Ottawa has scored twice during 4-on-4, tied for the third most in the league.
"The good thing about back-to-backs is that we play tomorrow again," Gaudette said last night. "We can throw this one in the rearview mirror and get right back at it … we've got a good solid team here but we need to stick together and work our butts off and come out on top."
Sens reach 20-game mark
It goes without saying that the Senators are not where they hoped they'd be at this stage of the season.
Through 20 games, the team is 4-15-1 after a tough November where they want 1-10-1.
"Right now, we just need to stick together and find a way out of this," Smith said.
While December got off to a losing start, the team has a jammed month with 14 games still remaining over the next 30 days.
And while the Senators can try to claw back games through winning the week, or even going with the game-by-game approach, Smith says its starts even earlier than that.
"You've got to win the shift," he said. "You can't look at the end result. If you look at the end result, you'll never get there. It's the process and how you get there … it's all of the little things that go into the game. There are a million things that happen in a game.
"If we get back to doing that, the results take care of themselves."
Smith used last year as an example: the Sens finished the season 9-2-1 after starting the year 2-12-1.
"If you look at last year when we got out of it, the systems are the exact same," Smith said. "Everything's the same. But what we were doing was committing to it to the nth degree and we were giving up significantly less and that's what we have to do [now]."
