After the Senators fought back from a 2-0 deficit to tie the game on Tuesday night, their carelessness on Minnesota's winning goal was a six-man effort.
Overall, the Ottawa Senators played a pretty solid game on Tuesday night and probably deserved a better fate than a 3-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild. Sometimes the hockey gods simply aren't on your side.
And other times, you're your own worst enemy.
With the Senators clawing their way back from a 2-0 deficit to tie the game in the third period, Minnesota's game-winning goal with just over six minutes to play summed up the kind of season it's been in Ottawa.
Everything that could go wrong did go wrong and remarkably, all six players on the ice had a hand in it.
The play began with Shane Pinto tracking back toward a puck in the neutral zone. All he had to do was make a simple pass back to his wide-open teammate Erik Brannstrom.
But Pinto completely fanned on the pass and that was the first domino to fall in a series of disastrous events in what may well be the most mistake-filled goal the Sens have allowed all season. It cost them the game and their five-game winning streak.
After Pinto's whiff on the pass, the puck trickled into Ottawa's zone and Brannstrom had to get to the wall to fight for a 50-50 puck. He tried to chip the puck back up the boards and got bowled over by Mason Shaw. Pinto arrived to support, whacked at the puck and it flew up into the air.
At this point, Brady Tkachuk was the only guy in position to protect the front of the net. Instead of doing that, Tkachuk sprinted away to become a breakout option for a puck that was floating five feet off the ice.
Batherson tried to grab the puck out of the air with his glove and take off behind his net with it, but instead he shoved it right to Vinni Lettieri, who had a clear lane to the net. Meanwhile, Jakob Chychrun was the last man to arrive back in his zone. It was hard to tell when Chychrun had last taken a stride, but there certainly wasn't one from his blue line in.
Without looking, Lettieri just shovelled a backhander at the net and Joonas Korpisalo, who didn't seem set, wasn't able to come up with the stop.
It's rare when all six players on the ice deserve some level of blame for a goal against, and this one was a 100% preventable goal that cost them the game. It truly was the perfect storm – a varying mix of carelessness, poor execution, and poor effort.
In the NHL, that's tough for a coach to swallow at any time, but late in a tie game, it's infuriating.