The power failure for the Ottawa Senators has hot critical mass with a 5-0 loss Saturday night to the Sharks in San Jose.
It was the third shutout in four games for the Sens who are 1-9-2 in their 12 games.
“I think obviously right now we’re not playing the way that we want to, we’re not feeling the way we want to, and we’re trying to find a way out of the rut that we’re in,” Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson said. “And sometimes when that happens you start overthinking stuff and
Aaron Dell picked up second shutout of season in 5-0 win over Ottawa Saturday night – file photo courtesy of Lewis Bleiman
making decisions that you don’t want to make.”
“It was an important game for us,” Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer said. “I thought we really wanted to concentrate on having a good start. Obviously last game, getting down 3-0 early against Carolina wasn’t the way we wanted to start here at home. I thought we fixed that tonight.”
Logan Couture had a goal and three points on the night for his 401st point in his NHL career.
“We scored 10 goals in the last two games and given up four,” Couture said. “We’re playing well. Tonight was one of our better efforts of the season.”
Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Melker Karlsson, Joe Pavelski, and Tomas Hertl added goals for San Jose in the win.
Aaron Dell made 25 saves to get is second shutout of the season as the Sharks improved to 16-10-2.
“He’s been great every time he goes in the net,” Vlasic said of Dell. “We have a lot of confidence in him, and he has confidence when he goes in. He doesn’t play as much as [Jones] does, but when he’s in it’s like he’s there every night.”
[WATCH:Â All Senators vs. Sharks highlights]
Craig Anderson made 45 saves in the loss.
“Another bad game by us,” Ottawa’s Mark Stone said. “We’ve got to find a way to get out of it. The bottom line is, you can’t keep playing like this and expect to win. We’re going to find a way. It’s just a matter of how, and we’ve got to find that way.”
The Senators sport a dismal 9-12-7 record and the loss of offense is leading to little push back when they fall behind.
“The guys are ready to come out, but we knew this was a difficult place to play. The first period is usually really hard here, and you’ve got to weather it,”  Senators coach Guy Boucher said of the loss. “And the way you’ve got to weather it is you’ve got to stay out of the box and you’ve got to avoid the turnovers, and those are the two things that we didn’t avoid right off the bat, and it killed us.”
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