The Ottawa Senators continue to search for consistency this season. They currently sit last in the Atlantic Division with a 22-19-6 record and have dropped five of their last seven games.
Ottawa is coming off a crushing 6-5 overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday night, a game that slipped away late. Afterward, Senators captain Brady Tkachuk didn’t shy away from addressing the disappointment.
Brady Tkachuk Reacts to Senators’ OT Loss vs. Montreal
The Senators appeared to be in control, holding a 5-3 lead at the end of the third. Montreal pulled their goaltender, Samuel Montembeault, for a man extra. And quickly closed the gap when Juraj Slafkovsky tipped at 4:40 remaining for his second goal of the night. Just 65 seconds later, Alexandre Carrier tied the game, beating Leevi Merilainen glove side.
Cole Caufield then ended it 33 seconds into overtime. After the game, Tkachuk said, “I think you do enough good things in a game to deserve a win, but sometimes it’s the way it goes.”
He acknowledged the frustration in the room but stressed the importance of learning from it. “Whenever you don’t win, it’s obviously frustrating. Everybody in this room wants to win,” he said. “There’s definitely positives and there’s definitely things to learn from and get better with, and that’s what we’re going to do and happy that we play tomorrow.”
When asked whether blowing leads has become a recurring issue this season, Tkachuk pushed back on the idea.
“I think every game has a lesson to be learned, and I mean, I wouldn’t say, I don’t know off the top of my head if that exact game happened earlier this year,” Brady said. “So, yeah, I don’t know. It’s just uh whenever you don’t win then you got to go back to the drawing board and figure out um how to get better.”
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How the Game Unfolded
Slafkovsky opened the scoring for Montreal at 3:06 of the first period to give a 1-0 lead on the power play . Caufield then scored at the end of the first, again on the power play.
Ottawa responded early in the second period as Tkachuk cut the lead to 2-1 just 42 seconds in on the power play. Then, Tim Stützle leveled at 2-2 at 3:07. Josh Anderson restored Montreal’s lead at 4:26, to make it 3-2.
Dylan Cozens then made it 3-3 at 15:31. David Perron took a lead 4-3 at 18:24 with a deflection shot.
Jake Sanderson extended the lead to 5-3 at 7:55 of the third period, but it wasn’t enough as Montreal stormed back late. Merilainen finished with 13 saves in his 10th straight start.
