*Photo from AP News*
How about a little comeback magic? Tim Stutzle had a goal and an assist, Claude Giroux scored the game winning goal, and the Ottawa Senators rallied past the Nashville Predators 4-3 in OT on Monday night in Ottawa.
Trailing by 3 goals after one period, the Senators ultimately scored 4 unanswered to win in extra time. It's their 4th win in 7 games and they now have a 5-3-2 record in their last 10. Brady Tkachuk also had a goal and an assist for the Senators.
Tkachuk, the Senators captain, said of the win "We showed our maturity from all the lessons that we’ve learned. In the past, it could’ve gotten away from us, but we stuck to it, stuck to our game and really emphasized doing it as a team versus trying to do it individually."
Michael McCarron started the scoring 8:26 into the game, giving the Predators a 1-0 lead on his 7th goal of the season. At the 16:30 mark of the period, Thomas Novak and Cody Glass assisted on Philip Tomasino's 6th goal of the season to make it 2-0 Predators. Yakov Trenin then scored his 8th of the season to make it 3-0 after one period.
Drake Batherson got the Senators on the board 5:21 into the second with an assist from Tkachuk. Stutzle scored his 11th goal of the season to cut the deficit to 3-2. Tkachuk scored late in the second to tie the game 3-3. After a scoreless 3rd, it was off to overtime, where Giroux scored with Josh Norris assisting to make it a 4-3 Ottawa win.
Getting the start for the Senators was Mads Sogaard, who didn't have it in the game as he allowed 3 goals on 11 shots before being pulled after one period. Joonas Korpisalo came on in relief and stopped all 17 shots he faced to improve to 11-16-2 with a win.
Ottawa interim head coach Jacques Martin said of making the goalie change that "I didn’t want to wait because I think that we needed a bit of a shock. Like, maybe to wake up the rest of the guys. So, we changed our goalies, changed our lines and kind of started from fresh and really tried to put some more pressure. I think our D pinched more, and I thought we had more sustained pressure and were able to capitalize."
It was Juuse Saros who started for the Predators, getting tagged with the OT loss as his record dropped to 19-18-2 through 39 starts. Saros made 31 saves on the 35 shots the Senators sent his way, recording a .886 save percentage.
Predators head coach Andrew Brunette said "They wanted it a little bit more in the second period. I thought fatigue set in. We’ve gone on a bit of a stretch here and our legs weren’t quite there, and then our brains shut off in a few situations, face-offs, gave up two face-off goals, kind of easy offense. But we showed a little bit of grit down the stretch where we know we didn’t have our game, but found a way to get a point."
Both teams get back in action on Wednesday night. The Senators hit the road for a matchup with the Detroit Red Wings, with Korpisalo expected to start. Saros is the likely starter for the Predators as they take on the Los Angeles Kings at home.
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