In Ottawa, Tyler Ennis hit for a hat trick and the Senators shut out the Buffalo Sabres, 5-0, on Tuesday night.
“We’re playing some good hockey right now and we’re growing as a team,” Ennis said. “Personally, obviously it feels good to put the puck in the net. It’s been tough for me this year to score, so getting three felt pretty good.”
The rejuvenated Matt Murray made 32 saves for his first shutout of the season.
“He made some huge saves in the third (period),” Ottawa head coach D.J. Smith said of Murray. “Some bad penalties by us, some ticky-tack penalties that I didn’t like. But he made some great saves on some failed clears. We gave him some chances that we shouldn’t have given up.
“He looks as good as he’s looked since he’s been here.”
Ennis scored twice in the opening period to help the Sens take a 3-0 lead.
“He had great legs since he’s sat a couple [games] in a row,” Smith said of Ennis, 32. “Sometimes you just need to refresh mentally, a reset. It’s like you’re starting the year over. I mean, he scored the first game of the year and it starts weighing on you. He sits a couple out, gets away from it a little bit, and he comes back and now here he is. Now all of a sudden he looks like he’s 20-year-old again.”
Drake Batherson also scored in the first period for the Senators.
The Sabres fell to 13-22-7.
“I think consistency is probably the biggest thing in this league,” Buffalo’s Casey Mittelstadt said. “If your team can learn to play night in and night out, you’ll give yourself a chance to win every night and a lot of the time you’re going to win a lot of games. We’re a young group and we’re learning, but eventually the page has to turn and we’ve got to do better.”
Alex Formenton added a single marker in the Ottawa win.
“You sit here after the fact and you say, ‘Yeah, it could’ve been the other way after the first 10 minutes,'” Sabres head coach Don Granato said. “But the way we did not respond after that is an indicator, to me, that we didn’t have a strong enough foundation going into the game. So there is no feeling good about anything. We had very little response, the way we wanted, after we fell behind.”
Ennis completed his hat trick with 30 seconds left in the third period.
Aaron Dell made 42 saves in the Buffalo loss.
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