Ice, Ice Baby: Senators 4, Blackhawks 1

Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? The Ottawa Senators just upended the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1 tonight, in a very hard fought game by Cory Clouston’s group. Chicago has all that firepower, and yet they only scored one goal in ther game, and that was a shorty by former Sen Marian Hossa.

The first goal was a real blemish by Hawks goalie Cristobal Huet. Even though it was Duncan Keith who gave it away to Chris Neil, Huet should have had a weak shot by rookie Zack Smith that went in. The second one by Ottawa only in the 1st period when Ryan shannon went top corner after Regin saucer passed it to the small forward. After Hossa scored a shorty, Peter Regin took a pass from Chris Neil, deked out Brian Campbell, faked a backhand, went with the wrap-around and scored on the Blackhawks. Good to see Regin get back on the saddle after a few games where he lost his momentum. Late in the 4th on the PP, Mike Fisher took a beautiful pass from Nick Foligno and snapped it past Huet to put the final nail in the coffin.

As I said in the Game Preview, the only way Ottawa would win was to score on Huet early and often. Crsitobal Huet allowed 2 goals on the first 4 shots and Ottawa went on to win. Chicago has some turnover problems, but their real weakness may be in goal, and it may be soon when rookie backup Antti Niemi steals the starter job just like Semyon Varlamov did in Washington last year. Hard work also prevailed for Ottawa, and Gary Galley noted in the 3rd that Ottawa was blocking shots and not letting Chicago to set up. That’s a formula for a win.

Despite all that, the player of the game was indeed Brian Elliott. Not only did he make 29 saves including some big ones in the 2nd where Chicago looked like they might come back, but he made a gigantic, enormous, heroic, spartan-like save on Marian Hossa in the 2nd period. Mis-playing the puck behind the net, Hossa had an mepty net to cut the Ottawa lead to 1. That easy. But Brian Elliott used those TMNT moves hem ust know and dived for the great stick save. That turned the game around right there and stopped a possible Chicago comeback.

The Sens are back at in on Thursday, hosting another Central Division opponent, this time the St.Louis Blues. Should be another goodie and possible win. First, let’s celebrate our win tonight!

Weird Stat of the Day: Daniel Alfredsson went pointless. And we still won. Go figure.