OTTAWA – From a five-game slide to a five-game win streak, the Ottawa Senators appear to have made a complete turnaround.
Chris Phillips scored a tiebreaking game-winner in the third period as the Ottawa Senators defeated the St. Louis Blues 3-2 on Thursday night.
“It feels great,” said Sens captain Daniel Alfredsson of the win streak. “It’s hard to do these days and you just try to keep the momentum going and keep working hard and try to give yourself a chance every night. It’s not going to last forever but we’re going to try to keep it going.”
Phillips scored a little more than 10 minutes into the third as he took a pass from Alfredsson and snapped a shot from the slot past Chris Mason in the St. Louis goal.
Petr Regin had a goal and two assists for the Senators (27-21-4), who won their fifth straight and remain in fifth spot in the Eastern Conference.
Milan Michalek also scored for the Senators while Alex Kovalev and Alfredsson had two assists each. Brian Elliott made 27 saves for his 13th win of the season.
Eric Brewer and Brad Boyes scored for the Blues (22-21-7) while Mason stopped 27 of the 30 shots. Boyes scored 30 seconds into the third period to tie the game 2-2 and silence the crowd of 16,063 at Scotiabank Place.
All three Senators’ goals came on the power play, marking the first time since March 17, 2009 that the Senators scored three power-play goals in a game.
“Our penalty killing has to be better, you can’t spot goals like that,” Brewer said. “It was a little clustered for both teams at first but they were able to find opportunities to score and we weren’t.”
The Blues outshot the Senators 15-3 in the third period, and tied the game 2-2 on Boyes’s goal.
“They came out and tied it right away and put us back on our heels, no doubt,” Phillips said. “Even though we didn’t get a lot of shots (in the third) we played in their zone and we had some momentum and we were able to get that power play, get that chance and go ahead.
“It feels great to keep that streak going.”
Michalek scored in his return to the lineup after missing seven games due to an upper body injury, giving the Senators a 2-0 lead midway through the second.
The winger completed a crisp passing play that had Kovalev feeding Regin a pass from the side boards to the side of the goal, and Regin immediately sent the puck to Michalek in the slot who beat Mason with a quick shot.
“We’ve played better lately,” Regin said. “We haven’t scored too many goals but it takes time and you have to get your confidence back. When you’re a little more relaxed out there, that helps.”
Brewer cut the lead late in the second period when a shot from teammate David Perron hit his skate and deflected past Elliott.
The Senators led 1-0 after the first period on Regin’s eighth of the season, but if not for a fraction of a second, the game would have been tied. Perron put the puck behind Elliott, but after a short review it was confirmed that time had just expired in the period negating the goal.
Senators defenceman Anton Volchenkov left the game early in the third period with an upper-body injury and did not return.
Notes: Goaltender Pascal Leclaire (concussion) along with forwards Jason Spezza (knee) and Jesse Winchester (knee) are still sidelined for Ottawa, having missed their fifth, 20th and seventh games respectively. …The Blues are injury-free and have lost just 106 man games to injury this season, compared to 150 for the Senators.
