The mental side of hockey is always intriguing.
Why is it that teams on a roll are due for a fall, and teams that lose players through injury find a way to rally around the cause? At least temporarily.
The Ottawa Senators have seen both sides of this spectrum. They had some early success on home ice, faltered, and then found a way to win in Pittsburgh on Saturday night, despite missing three starting defencemen.
Maybe catching the Penguins after their big shutout victory over the Colorado Avalanche was a factor. Pittsburgh came in on a high, but Ottawa used a textbook road formula to pull out a 5-2 win, with goaltender Joonas Korpisalo making 22 first-period saves as the Pens outshot the Sens 22-7 in the first 20 minutes but watched the visitors take a 2-0 lead.
How did the Senators play so well, protecting that lead effectively over the next 40 minutes, while missing defencemen Thomas Chabot (broken hand), Erik Brannstrom (concussion) and Artem Zub (head/ear injury)?
“Adversity forced us to play simple,” said Senators captain Brady Tkachuk, who scored twice to lead his team offensively. “Stay on the defensive side of the puck and go from there.”
Tkachuk, who leads the team with six goals, says the priority of all four lines was to be “even or better” in plus-minus.
Mission accomplished.
Even the emergency callups on defence from AHL Belleville wound up in plus territory.
Jacob Bernard-Docker, already on the scene to replace Zub last week, played 21:45 and was plus-two. Tyler Kleven, who saw action with Ottawa last season, played 9:23 and was plus-one. Nikolas Matinpalo, making his NHL debut, played 8:24 and was plus-one.
Sophomore defenceman Jake Sanderson and veteran Jakob Chychrun did the heavy lifting. Sanderson played 25:58 and Chychrun, 27:14. He was plus-two.
With no games until Thursday when the Los Angeles Kings visit, it was a good night for Ottawa’s best players to empty the tank.
Sidney Crosby had a goal and assist for Pittsburgh, but the Penguins never looked capable of a comeback once Ottawa had staked out a 3-0 lead on just nine shots against Tristan Jarry. He was hooked for Magnus Hellberg at that point, early in the second period. Hellberg was familiar to the Senators, having played for them as a waiver wire pickup last October.
For head coach D.J. Smith, the win had to come as a big relief after losses to Detroit, Buffalo and the New York Islanders, the first two of those losses on home ice.
Smith deployed his first unit of Tim Stützle, Claude Giroux and Tkachuk against the Crosby line and Giroux responded with a three-point night, all assists. Giroux was 67 per cent in the faceoff circle while Crosby was 57 per cent, as the Pens sought to avoid that matchup.
“I loved the effort by our top guys,” Smith said. “Certainly our top line, head to head with Crosby there, were above the puck all night. That’s probably Timmy’s best game of the season.
“And then the gutsy effort by the guys on the back end, those guys that ate the big minutes, did a real good job.”
Smith concurred with his captain that the manpower losses forced the Sens to play a tight, simple road game. And players picked each other up.
“Sometimes it takes some adversity and losing a couple of guys before you realize how hard it is to win in the National Hockey League,” Smith said. “We played some good games early and maybe got a little full of ourselves thinking we could score at will, kind of thing. Before you know it, it’s in the back of the net and you lose three in a row. Tonight we realized how hard we had to check and work just to come up with two points.”
Korpisalo was key, shutting the door early when the Penguins could have run up a lead. He was all over the crease, and on his back, stopping pucks. He also had a lot of help, as Ottawa defenders blocked 23 Pittsburgh shots.
“They came in hot, threw everything to the net in the first period,” Korpisalo said. “We did a great job blocking shots, clearing the rebounds. Just battling today. That was the key word.”
Tkachuk says the team values Korpisalo, not just for his play on the ice but his demeanour.
“His personality is good for us,” Tkachuk said of the calm veteran.
Korpisalo improved his numbers dramatically. He is now 2-3-0 with a goals-against of 3.22 and .902 save percentage. That’s closer to his career stats after a tough couple of early starts for the Senators.
Smith said he hated the fact the Penguins got a late goal to make it 5-2.
But he credited his team for clogging up the neutral and defensive zones. It was obvious. The Penguins kept trying to stickhandle through the tangle of players at Ottawa’s blue line, and they lost a lot of pucks in the attempt.
The game also lifted two of the Senators' frustrated shooters, with Drake Batherson and Dominik Kubalik scoring their first goals of the season.
For one night at least, the defensive callups survived.
“Everyone was on the same page,” Korpisalo says. “Matinpalo, Kleven and JBD came in like they’d never missed a game. All in all, every guy chipped in.”
Korpisalo added that “when you see the guys blocking shots like that, you want to make sure (as a goalie) you win the game.”
They did. And calmed the waters a bit as the Sens improved their record to 4-4-0 ahead of two home games this week.
