Isles down Senators, 4-2

In Ottawa, the New York Islanders went 2-for-3 on the power play Monday night, Semyon Varlamov made 36 saves  in a 4-2 win over the Senators.

“I thought he was terrific,” New York coach Lane Lambert said. “I thought he played an outstanding game. We’ve been getting solid goaltending out of both goalies. [Varlamov] was outstanding tonight.”

New York improved to 11-6-0.

Jean-Gabriel Pageau had a goal for the isles in the win.

“They have a good power play, but we were well prepared, and I thought the guys battled hard,” Pageau said. “A lot of sacrifice, a lot of blocked shots, a lot of battles that we won, and [Varlamov] in net was outstanding. He made some really amazing saves for us.”

Claude Giroux and Drake Batherson were the Sens strikers.

Batherson scored after the Islanders took a 1-0 lead in the first period off a goal from Oliver Wahlstrom .

“It’s nice to score the first goal, that’s for sure. We’ve had some comebacks, too,” Lambert said. “But tonight, I thought we did a really good job with the lead, and it was, really, a character win. It was as much a character win, or more, as the comebacks. We fought through a lot of adversity tonight.”

Ottawa dropped to 5-9-1.

“I thought we played well again,” Ottawa captain Brady Tkachuk said. “We stuck to our game, we were getting behind them. That’s a good, veteran, older team who knows how to play the right way for 60 minutes. I thought we did a good job of matching that.”

Noah Dobson restored the lead for New York with a marker in the opening frame.

“At the end of the day, it’s special teams,” Ottawa coach D.J. Smith said. “They score two and we score one. We lose.”

Pageau pushed the lad to 3-1 near the midway point of the third period.

“There’s a lot of experience in the locker room, and we stayed pretty composed and we kept playing,” Pageau said. “We didn’t stop. We played in our structure.”

Brock  Nelson added an empty-net goal with 70 seconds left in the gale for the 4-2.

Cam Talbot made 31 saves in the Senators loss.

“I still think we played pretty good in the third,” Giroux said. “We got our chances, and we were able to get to 3-2. I don’t think we played badly. I think obviously we know we have to play better, but there’s a lot of good things today.”