OTTAWA -- The Stanley Cup-contending Colorado Avalanche were favoured to beat the Ottawa Senators on Thursday night. But there was an expectation that some of the Senators' best players would have a bounce-back of some sort.
Brady Tkachuk's nine-game points streak was snapped Tuesday against the Canadiens, a game where he admitted he wasn't at his best. Tkachuk didn't feel he played hard enough with or without the puck. He insisted he's healthy, nearly a week after "tweaking" his hip. And then there's Tim Stützle, who hasn't scored since an overtime win over Chicago earlier this month. Entering Thursday night's game, he had two shots on goal in his last five games.
"I don't think all three of us (his line with Tkachuk and Claude Giroux) have played good enough," Stützle said Thursday morning about his team's performance against Montreal. "It was way too many times we were one-and-done. Not winning enough puck battles. We've just got to get back to doing that."
The Sens' top line was ultimately a non-factor against the Avs in a 5-1 loss Thursday, and the rest of the team wasn't much different. We haven't said that about this Sens team in recent weeks.
Ottawa held Colorado without a shot for the first five minutes of the contest, and then the barrage came: four first-period goals, and a second-period goal for good measure. Sens goalie Linus Ullmark was pulled before the first period ended after allowing four goals on 13 shots.
The Senators also couldn't avoid penalty trouble and were burned twice on the penalty kill. Brock Nelson scored his first two goals in an Avs uniform, while Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Joel Kiviranta added to the Sens' misery.
"For seven to eight minutes, I thought we came out exactly how we wanted to," Senators head coach Travis Green said. "Had a couple of really good looks to go up one- or two-nothing. Yet by the end of the period, we're down 4-0 and we're swimming uphill a little bit. Or a lot."
The Senators have lost back-to-back games for the first time since late February. Ottawa has experienced highs and lows through a roller-coaster season, either winning or losing consecutive games with starts and stops few and far between. Their likelihood of a playoff berth remains high, but recent history suggests the Senators could be at the beginning of another slide.
"Those are two games," Stützle said, who opted to take the 1000-foot approach.
Green thought Tkachuk and Stützle were "much more engaged" against the Avs. They were two of the three Senators forwards who finished with a Corsi rating above 50 percent at five-on-five (if you correctly guessed Matthew Highmore as the third, you get a cookie) and they clearly weren't the team's worst players. But their overall stat lines were still disappointing as they struggled against a dominant Avs team. Tkachuk was held to two shots and four hits. Stützle earned an assist on his team's lone goal from Dylan Cozens but was held without a shot on goal for a third consecutive game.
"We believed we had a chance at coming back," Stützle said. "But then we kept taking more penalties. They're a great team over there. They play fast. We just didn't play good enough. We just didn't play fast enough. Our passes weren't on the tape."
The Senators can stop their bleeding with a win over New Jersey on Saturday. All eyes will be on Green's lineup choices. He didn't change his lines after the loss to the Canadiens because he felt they gave his team "the best chance to win." But once the game was out of reach, the Senators tried some new combinations.
Giroux was lost in the shuffle as he only played 12:09 with one shot on goal. It opened the door for a few players to play with Tkachuk and Stützle, including newcomer Fabian Zetterlund. The Swedish winger got one shot on goal in 16:03, the most he's played since joining the Sens after the deadline. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Tkachuk-Stützle-Zetterlund line was the Senators' best at five-on-five with a 66.67 percent Corsi rate. But there's more needed offensively, as they only mustered a 0.09 expected goals rate alongside a 0.04 expected goals-against rate.
"(Zetterlund) looked OK," Green said. "I wanted to get him some more minutes tonight again. These get to be hard games when you're down at that moment. But I wanted to make sure we got him some minutes and get some more looks at him."
If Green decides to keep Zetterlund on that top line, it will be fascinating to see what it means for Giroux. It's unclear whether Green's intent to bump up Zetterlund is simply temporary. But after back-to-back disappointing losses, it would be a surprise to see the Senators unveil the same lineup again.
It is not time to panic just yet. But the onus remains on the Sens, wherever they're placed, to end their losing skid as teams lurk behind them in the wild-card race.
"The Montreal one stung in that fashion," Tkachuk said. "This one hurts in a different type of way. This is where you get into a slippery slope if you think that we're going into Saturday and we're going to lose. It's just not the case. You've got to put it behind us. It's a fresh game. New game, new opportunity and an opportunity for us to make an impact on the game and get back to our winning ways."