The Senators climbed back to .500 with an impressive road victory over the Red Wings.
Stop us if you've heard this one before, but the Ottawa Senators are starting to look like a young team that's ready to finally turn the corner.
On Saturday night, they beat Alex DeBrincat and the Detroit Red Wings 5-1 at Little Caesar's Arena in Detroit. Claude Giroux, Vladimir Tarasenko and Jakob Chychrun led the way with two points apiece. With the victory, the Senators climbed back to .500 with a record of 11-11-0.
The Senators won with their special teams, killing 4 of 5 penalties and scoring twice on the power play. Joonas Korpisalo stood tall, stopping 30 of 31 shots.
The game started with an early Senators power play because of a David Perron tripping penalty. Giroux made them pay, pouncing on a rebound off a point shot from Chychrun to put the Senators up 1-0.
Detroit captain Dylan Larkin left the game in the first with an upper-body injury after being shoved from behind by Mathieu Joseph during a battle in the slot. It looked like a crosscheck at first but overhead replays showed it was a push to the head from Joseph's glove. Larkin then fell head first into into Parker Kelly and the Wings captain was out cold. Larkin was eventually able to skate off the ice with help.
Joseph and Kelly both got minor penalties. Meanwhile, Red Wings forward David Perron received a match penalty for intent to injure after an ugly cross-check on Artem Zub. Perron mistakenly thought Zub was responsible for Larkin's injury, so he hit him with a lunging cross-check to the side of the head.
Shortly after, Patrick Kane scored his first goal of the season and first as a Red Wing to tie the game at 1. Kane walked into the slot and wristed one over Joonas Korpisalo’s glove.
Early in the 2nd period, Vladimir Tarasenko restored Ottawa's lead on the power play, scoring off a one timer to put the Senators up again 2-1. Dominik Kubalik then came back to haunt his old team. He teed off on a beautiful pass from Mathieu Joseph to make it 3-1 Senators.
Near the end of the second, Ottawa went up 4-1 on a beautiful goal from Tim Stutzle. It was all started by Zub stopping the Red Wings breakout at the blueline, where the puck landed on Drake Batherson’s stick. Batherson sauced a beautiful pass to Stutzle behind the Detroit defence and the young German made no mistake.
Detroit’s head coach Derek Lalonde decided to pull goalie Alex Lyon after the second period to insert James Reimer. The Red Wings had time in the intermission to see what happened, but still wanted vengeance for Joseph’s incident with Larkin earlier in the game. Christian Fischer dropped the gloves with the Sens winger.
Joonas Korpisalo was put to the test a number of times in the third, making two massive glove saves on Alex DeBrincat and another big stop on a Joe Veleno breakaway.
Jake Sanderson finished off the game by lobbing a 200 foot wrist shot over everyone into an empty net to make it 5-1 Senators.
The Senators will play the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday night in Ottawa at 7pm.
By the Numbers:
Joonas Korpisalo earned his 100th career win. Claude Giroux became the second fastest player in Senator history to record 100 points with the team. Mathieu Joseph's fight was only the second of his career.