Toronto Maple Leafs (7-3-1) @ Ottawa Senators (7-5-0)
Tonight’s battle of Ontario was the second of six meetings as Ottawa evened the season series one game apiece. Both teams came into tonight on fire as the Senators turned a five game unbeaten streak into six and the Leafs were coming off a hard fought win on top of their great start to the season.
Gustavsson started his third in a row since coming in for Reimer in Montreal. Other than one soft goal he made some big saves which ultimately kept the Leafs in the game considering being outshot 25 to 30. Young Sens goaltender Robin Lehner started his first game of the year after 2 relief appearances. The 20 year old Swede came up strong when needed battling for the win.
Clark MacArthur spoiled the score sheet going high glove side on the powerplay as the Leafs climbed ahead with the first goal of the game. Clark has found his scoring touch with at least a goal in each of his last 3 games. Cornell graduate Colin Greening, also on the powerplay, made it 1-1. Greening is in first full season and is off to a productive start with 7 pts on the year.
The second period can be summarized by penalty after penalty with only team capitalizing. Chris Neil redirected a Karlsson point shot going five hole to beat Gustavsson on the powerplay, 2-1 Sens. The Leafs lost all of their momentum with the multiple penalties and goal against as the Sens healthfully outshot the Leafs once again. Up to this point in the game all goals were scored by way of the powerplay.
The first non powerplay goal of the evening came from Kaspars Daugavins as he increased Ottawa’s lead to two with a weak wrister past Gustavsson, over shadowing an other wise decent performance. MacArthur gave the Leafs hope as he finished off a nice pass from Grabovski to shrink the deficit to one goal. Too little to late sounds like I am referring to the Leafs playoff runs as of late as they were unable to climb that last hurdle. Positive pressure was shown in the last few minutes but Ottawa was able to hold on increasing their impressive win streak to six games.
By: Liam Niven
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