In Ottawa, Anton Forsberg made 22 saves and the Senators shut out the Columbus Blue Jackets, 4-0, on Tuesday night. 
“Feels nice to get the shutout,” Forsberg said. “Good for the confidence.”
The Senators improved to 18-17-3.
“We’ve just got to keep chipping away,” Ottawa coach D.J. Smith said. “We want to get back in the pack. That’s our big goal. January is a big month for us.”
Ottawa took a 1-0 lead in the second period on a power play goal from Derick Brassard.
“You don’t give yourself a chance — that’s the problem,” Blue Jackets coach Brad Larsen said. “The first (period) was very even [and] we had some really good looks, but we don’t score; that’s fine. And then you get down, you get down again and you get down again. So, now there’s no rhythm, you’ve lost all of it.”
Tim Stutzle pushed the lead to 2-0.
“Tim’s one of those guys who has confidence and makes plays that not a lot of players can make,” Ottawa;s Claude Giroux said. “Right now, he’s got confidence, so we try to get him the puck and we try to get open for him.”
Columbus dropped to 11-23-2.
“Sometimes the best wins are coming from behind, and we just haven’t seemed to ever find that this year,” Columbus forward Cole Sillinger said. “We haven’t scored the most goals, right? We’re scoring one, two, maybe maximum three goals a game, and it’s tough when you get down 3-0 in the third and you’re trying to fight back. We just have to dig a little deeper and play together.”
Drake Batherson extended the Sens lead to 3-0 off the power play before the end of the middle frame.
“You took four [penalties], what do you expect is going to happen against a good power play?” Larsen said. “It’s just silly. They’re all penalties, every single one of them.”
Austin Watson scored in the third period for the 4-0 final.
“I think we checked really hard today,” Stutzle said. “Everyone was tracking and, like you see on the last goal, [Hamonic] puts his body on the line there to block a shot from Laine, who has a pretty hard shot. So, that just shows how hard we work as a team.”
Joonas Korpisalo made 30 saves in the Blue Jackets loss.
“We took too many penalties, especially in one period,” Columbus defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov said. “Their power play is pretty lethal, but we’ve got to be better than that. We’ve got to be careful. It’s on us.”
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