OTTAWA — Veteran Chris Neil was clearly frustrated with his team on Saturday night.
The Senators coughed up a three-goal lead in the third period and watched the Anaheim Ducks skate away with a 4-3 victory when Rickard Rakell scored the winner in overtime.
Rackell’s goal came on the power play and snapped a two-game losing streak for Anaheim.
“It’s disappointing to give up that lead,” said Neil. “Up 3-0 and it’s guys cheating to make it 4-0, 5-0 instead of just holding the lead. We left our goalie hung out to dry and that’s unacceptable. If you do it right you end up getting more scoring chances than if you’re cheating for them. It’s frustrating.
“You’ve got to play defensively, backcheck hard and do what you’ve got to do to keep the puck out of your net and obviously we didn’t do that in the third period.”
Ryan Getzlaf, Jakob Silfverberg and Hampus Lindholm also scored for the Ducks (41-23-10). Frederik Andersen made 29 saves.
Mike Hoffman, Erik Karlsson and Neil scored for the Senators (34-34-8), who have now lost three straight. Craig Anderson stopped 35 shots.
“I think we wanted it more than they did for the first two periods,” said Karlsson. “Even in the beginning of the third, but once they get the first goal it feels like we don’t really want it that much anymore and we don’t want to play the same way as we did earlier in the game to keep it going. Good teams are going to make you pay.”
Hoffman was awarded a penalty shot early in the third period, but lost the puck and never challenged Andersen. From that point on it was all Anaheim.
“I had opportunities to seal the game off and didn’t take advantage of them,” said Hoffman. “For sure I take a little bit of responsibility for not scoring those goals that I think this team counts on me to do.”
Getzlaf opened the scoring for the Ducks, tucking one under the crossbar at the five-minute mark, and Silfverberg made it a one-goal deficit after scoring at 11:31. Lindholm tied the game in the final minute of the third.
“I thought we were playing a pretty good game in the first period and then we make a bad play and it’s in our net,” said Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau. “We make two bad plays in the second and it’s in our net, but once they got the goal in the third and we stopped the penalty shot they believed they could win.”
Coming off back-to-back losses, the Senators looked for a strong start and got that off a couple great chances by Mika Zibanejad early in the game.
The Senators finally got on the board with 47 seconds remaining in the first when Bobby Ryan made a great backhand pass to Hoffman, who beat Andersen short side.
The Senators made it 2-0 when Karlsson scored 39 seconds into the second period. Jean-Gabriel Pageau found the captain with a nice pass through the crease.
Nick Paul did a great job beating Josh Manson in a puck battle and then slid a great pass to Neil, who scored his fourth of the season to make it 3-0 at 16:28.
The Senators power play continues to sputter and is now 0 for 32 with the man advantage in their past 12 games.
Notes: Ottawa D Dion Phaneuf missed his second straight game due to a lower-body injury. C Scott Gomez was a healthy scratch. Anaheim’s Ryan Kesler missed a second straight game due to personal reasons. Chris Stewart returned to the lineup after missing 19 games with a fractured jaw.
