A Night Of Badness - Our 10th Regulation Loss

The Senators always play well against us. And they are a hot team right now psyched up to play the top-pointed club in the NHL - which amazingly is us.

We out-shot Ottawa 34-24. We out-hit them 37-21. In other words, we gave ourselves a legitimate chance to win the hockey game.

And we started off flying - at one point putting a barrage of 12 consecutive first period shots on their goalie, the honorable Senator Craig Anderson.

After a great chance by Derek Stepan - a big tasty rebound found the stick of the recovering Marc Staal, who is recently back from a long concussion-injury layoff and looking for his first goal of the season. How perfect would it have been for Staal to notch one to put the Ranger's up a goal in their attempt at an eight consecutive win?

Marc sent a nasty 11 foot backhander at Craig Anderson. But - the Senator from Ottawa handled it. And he kept on handling the Ranger's offense for the rest of the night.

It's hard to win if you don't score - and in the end another Ranger win streak ended, this time in a 3-0 loss to a team that almost always finds a way to beat us.

Gaborik, notably, had zero shots on goal, no hits, one give-away and a -1 for the night. Boyle, Richards and Stepan launched 4 shots each. 8 hits for Boyle - the highest total for a single player I can remember this season. 4 hits each for Callahan and Prust.

Hank had a very ordinary .875 save percentage - the lowest I can remember him having in a LONG time.

We were 0-4 on the powerplay and let in a power play goal in 2 kill-attempts.

So, a night of badness, and our 10th regulation loss. But - with 27 wins - it's hard to complain. We ended one win streak. Let's try to get another one started.

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