In Ottawa, the late season successes of the Senators continued with a 6-3 win over the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night.
The Sens outscored the Canucks, 4-2, in the second period to take control of the game.
Thomas Chabot and Brady Tkachuk led the way with a goal and two points apiece in the win.
“Chabot was outstanding,” Ottawa head coach D.J. Smith said of the defenseman. “He had the puck on his stick the entire game. He’s skating, he’s playing well in the [offensive] zone. A lot of times, people want to point out he makes mistakes because he plays so many minutes, but you watch him play tonight and how many plays he made, it’s phenomenal.”
Marcus Hogberg made 19 saves to earn the win.
Victor Mete opened the scoring in the middle frame to give the Senators a 1-0 lead.
“We didn’t play good enough to win, that’s for sure,” Vancouver head coach Travis Green said. “We weren’t very good tonight. We got what we deserved.”
Chris Tierney and Josh Morris pushed the lead to 3-0.
Vancouver got on the board with a goal from Tyler Myers to make it 3-1.
“Am I disappointed tonight? Yeah, for sure,” Green said. “How could we not be? You want to win, you want your players to win badly, your coaching staff wants to win badly. We should be disappointed that we lost. When you lose a big game — and we’ve lost two in a row here that were big games — there’s nothing wrong with being disappointed.”
Chabot and Jake Virtanen exchanged foals to finish the scoring in the second and make it 4-2.
Tkachuk scored in the third period and Colin White added an empty net goal for the Senators to make it 6-2.
“As long as we play like we did today and we continue to build off that,” Tkachuk said, “I think everybody can look at themselves going into next year with a smile on their face and say that they left it all out there.”
Brandon Sutter put some window dressing on the scoreboard with a late strike for the 6-3 final.
Thatcher Demko made 27 saves in the loss.
“Tonight, it starts with us defending,” the Canucks’ Alexander Edler said. “That’s something we’ve talked about. You’ve got to defend well to shut down the other team and create offense. I think we’ve got to do a better job of that. It’s all five guys working together in our [defensive] zone, whether it’s back pressure or communication or puck battles.”
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