Sens’ scoring slump continues

The Ottawa Senators’ offensive woes continued—and they weren’t alone as Canadian teams mustered a measly four goals in four games in NHL action last night.
The Senators reunited the potentially potent line of Daniel Alfredsson, Dany Heatley, and Jason Spezza before yesterday’s match against the host N.Y. Rangers, but it made little impact as Ottawa fell 2-1 in a shootout.

Alfredsson had the lone goal for the Senators, who are winless in their past five games and have scored only five goals during that span. Last night they couldn’t even find the net once in the shootout as Henrik Lundquist stopped all three Senators’ shooters, including Spezza.
“We had a chance to win 1-0 until they got a good rebound goal,” Alfredsson said. “We’re creating chances and we can’t look at the negatives now.
“There are positives,” he stressed. “The efforts we’ve had the last two games have been good enough to win.”
Nikolai Zherdev’s shootout goal was all the Rangers would need against the toothless Senators.
The Rangers opted to shoot first and Zherdev beat Ottawa goalie Alex Auld between the pads. That left it up to Lundqvist to stop Spezza, Jarko Ruutu, and Antoine Vermette for his NHL-leading 12th win.
“I like the challenge of facing the best players on the other team,” Lundqvist said. “I get nervous because you play such a big part and you want to win so badly. You need to have a lot of patience and confidence.
“Right now, I have both.”
“You never take anything for granted, but it sure is good to know he is spot-on good when it comes to that part of the game,” Rangers’ coach Tom Renney said.
Fredrik Sjostrom scored for the Rangers in regulation time as the Eastern Conference leaders stretched their winning streak to three.
“We were fired up and we were going to have this win, no matter what,” Sjostrom said. “Everybody excelled and played really hard tonight.”
The Senators had a 9-8 shot advantage in an evenly played, scoreless first period.
Thanks to a pair of power plays, the Senators dominated the first half of the second period, but could not break through against Lundqvist.
Ottawa had eight of the first nine shots in the period. The persistence paid off with 3:47 left when Alfredsson got his first goal in 11 games.
The Senators’ captain picked up the puck in the left corner and wheeled into the slot to beat Lundqvist with a wrist shot.
“I kind of got loose,” Alfredsson noted. “I got some free space, and was able to walk in and find an opening.”
In the third, Lundqvist made a blocker stop on Vermette’s short-handed breakaway in the opening minutes to prevent Ottawa from expanding its lead.
The save was a turning point as the Rangers evened the score on Sjostrom’s tally at 7:17. Marc Stall unloaded a hard shot from the point and Sjostrom knocked in the rebound for his second goal.
New York’s Michal Rozsival had the only shot in overtime—a sharp-angle bid in the final seconds.
The Senators’ offensive misery had plenty of company last night. The Edmonton Oilers couldn’t manage a single goal on Detroit back-up Ty Conklin in a 4-0 loss to the Red Wings.
Meanwhile, the Vancouver Canucks scored 49 seconds into their game with the N.Y. Islanders—only to see their offence completely dry up in a 2-1 shootout loss.
Like the Sens, the Canucks couldn’t get anything past unheralded Islanders’ goalie Joey MacDonald in the shootout.
And with a paltry two goals, the Toronto Maple Leafs were Canada’s top offensive team of the night, but their modest attack wasn’t enough in a 3-2 loss to the Boston Bruins.
The San Jose Sharks beat the Nashville Predators 4-1 in the only other NHL game last night.