In Ottawa, Mike Smith got his first game action of the season and made 27 saves to help the Edmonton Oilers to a 3-1 win over the Senators on Monday night.
“I think the biggest thing is everyone knows how well he plays the puck,” Oilers forward Tyler Ennis said of Smith. “He gives our [defensemen] some relief back there. He’s a motivator in the net, he’s a good leader and he stops [pucks]. He gave us a boost tonight.”
Evgenii Dadonov had the only goal against Smith.
“We didn’t get to the goalie here enough,” Senators head coach D.J. Smith said. “And when the goalie sees the puck in this league, they make the saves. We had a few opportunities, but we let their goalie see the puck for the majority of the game.”
The Sens dropped to 2-10-1.
“Get some more pucks on net,” the Senators’ Nick Paul said. “Sometimes we’re making the extra pass. We’ve got to get some greasy goals here to get us going.”
Tyler Ennis and Leon Draisaitl scored for the Oilers.
“That’s how we want to play all the time,” Edmonton head coach Dave Tippett said. “We want to be a hard-working team and we’ve done it in spurts, and then it feels like when we’re chasing the game, and any team’s like that, you get chasing the game, you get out of sync a little bit and you’re taking risks to get back in the game. But tonight was solid all the way through. We stayed with it shift to shift.”
Edmonton improved to 7-7-0.
Josh Archibald added an empty-netter to ice the win.
Matt Murray made 32 saves in the loss and was without much offensive support once again.
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