The Ottawa Senators had their third game in five nights as they hit the road to Buffalo to take on the Buffalo Sabres in the first of four meetings this season.
The Senators entered the game with momentum after a 3-0 shutout win in their last game on Saturday against the Seattle Kraken. However, tonight's game against the Sabres was anything but phenomenal.
The Sabres defeated the Senators 5-1 at KeyBank Center to drop the Sabres to 6-6-0 on the season and worsened the Senators' road record to 1-5-0.
Nothing went right in the Senators' fourth consecutive road loss except Ridly Greig scoring his scoring his second goal of the season with Tim Stutzle and Brady Tkachuk picking up the assists. Tonight was the worst loss of the season so far for the Senators.
2. Slow starts in every period are hard to get out of
In the Senators' last road game on Friday night against the New York Rangers where they fell 2-1, the Senators started the first period and third period slow when the Rangers scored early into the period. Tonight, the Sabres did the same thing with getting off to a fast start in each period.
JJ Peterka scored a powerplay goal 6:37 into the game, and the Senators couldn't find momentum for the rest of the first period.
Seventeen seconds into the second period, Bowen Byram scored to make it 2-0 Sabres. Momentum appeared to be on the Senators' side after Greig scored over seven minutes later after Byram scored to start the second period.
The third period went beyond ugly for the Senators. Byram scored 21 seconds into the period to score his second goal of the game. Just 16 seconds later, Tage Thompson scored to make it 4-1. Two goals in a span 16 seconds to open the third period is just a momentum killer, and the Senators couldn't dig themselves out of it. Peterka scored another powerplay goal in the third period to make it 5-1 to make it a third period to forget for the Senators.