Not every loss is a heartbreaker. If there's such a thing as a gut-check defeat, the Ottawa Senators delivered it in Saturday's 2-1 shootout loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

In a game full of plot lines, including the heating up of the nasty Battle of Ontario rivalry and an unlikely outstanding goaltending performance by Senators goaltender Pascal Leclaire, the main story was about how the Senators managed to survive a wild flu bug.

The Senators hung on long enough to take the game to a shootout, where goals from Phil Kessel and Nikolai Kulemin finally finished off the down-and-out Senators. Alex Kovalev and Jason Spezza failed to score on their shootout attempts.