In Chicago, Alex Stalock made 35 saves for the Blackhawks in a 5-0 shutout of the visiting Ottawa Senators on Monday night.
“That’s a bonus on anything, but just winning any night in this league is so dang hard,” Stalock said about getting the shutout. “The League’s so good, every team’s so good. … Any time there’s stuff like that, it’s a bonus, but the two points is the most important thing that anybody cares about at the end of the night.”
Seth Jones hit for a double in the win, his two goals extended a 1-0 lead to 3-0.
Philipp Kurashev scored for Chicago in the opening stanza for the 1-0 lead, Jones followed with his double in the middle frame.
Anders Bjork, who had three assists, had helpers on the Jones’ goals, he was acquired by the Blackhawks in a trade with the Senators.
“Yeah, it felt great,” he said. “Those were two great shots that he had there, so [I’m] glad I passed to him. Those were unbelievable goals. That was a great win for us.
“I thought we played the right way the whole game and everyone played well. My communication with my line (with Kurashev and Lukas Reichel), we were talking about playing the right way, and I think we did a really good job of that and tried to do that all three periods, and we were pretty successful.”
The Senators dropped to 32-27-4, after their five-game winning streak ended in the loss.
“Right from the get-go, just attention to detail, odd-man rushes that we gave up … it was everything that we hadn’t done in the previous five games, we did tonight,” Senators coach D.J. Smith said. “It’s tough to explain how well we’ve played to come out and do this. But you’ve got to turn the page quickly.
“We were feeling so good playing at home, and then to come out here — just no rhythm, no feel, team wasn’t prepared. That’s on me. My job is to get them prepared and to push them every day, and we weren’t ready to play today.”
Jason Dickinson ballooned the lead to 4-0 midway through the second stanza for Chicago.
Reichel scored off a breakaway in the third for the 5-0 final.
“We played real solid [defense], so it translated into real good offense,” Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson said. “Even on Reichel’s goal, he knew when he could go because we had full control and just kind of shut them down, coming to the blue line, and he sprouted out there and got a nice play. Just kind of cap off the game. It was nice to get him on the board too.”
Mads Sogaard made 16 saves in the Ottawa loss.
“I told him throughout the game, ‘None of this is your fault. We just completely [hurt] you,'” Senators captain Brady Tkachuk said of Sogaard. “Right from the start, the way we played, we completely left him out to dry. That’s just never what we want to do as a team. All the boys we have, [they’ve] stood on their heads, made big saves and stole us games throughout this whole year. It’s honestly unacceptable that we just leave him out to dry like that.”
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