Ottawa Senators snap New York Rangers’ five-game winning streak with 3-0 shutout – NHL Update
New York Rangers’ five-game winning streak ended in a destructive fashion as Ottawa Senators routed and shut them out in the National Hockey League (NHL) game, 3-0, on Thursday, January 12, 2012, at the Madison Square Garden, New York.
Ottawa's goalie, Craig Anderson, earned his first shutout after making 34 straight saves and was appreciated by leading forward, Jason Spezza, who scored two goals in the game.
"He's just so steady back there right now and you can tell he's got confidence. When your goalie exudes that type of confidence, the team has that type of confidence. He's done a great job calming things down when we're scrambling a little bit. There's times
in the game where the other team is going to take momentum, and he's done a good job of taking it back”.
Anderson’s highlighting features of the game included two straight stops in the first period.
In the sixth minute of the game, Derek Stepan fired a shot, which was blocked by Anderson.
The puck rebounded after hitting the goalie and found Marc Staal, whose shot was also dealt with in the same manner by the hot goalie.
The first period remained scoreless, but a nervous moment came for the Senators when Spezza received a knee hit from Ruslan Fedotenko, who was handed down a two-minute penalty for the action.
The second period also remained low scoring as the Senators did not take advantage of the power-play gained after the penalty.
On the other hand, Rangers also could not beat the determined Anderson in the opposing net.
Finally, Spezza found an opportunity as Chris Phillips gained control of the puck after beating Brian Boyle and passed it on to him, who made no mistake in giving the Senators a lead.
The rest of the period went without another goal.
New York Rangers tried to level the score in the final period, but the Senators hit back strongly as Milan Michalek scored his 23rd goal of the 2011-2012 NHL regular season to increase the lead.
After around a minute, Rangers’ captain, Ryan Callahan, was penalised for high-sticking Filip Kuba and was sent off for two minutes with a minor penalty.
The Senators utilised the power-play this time and Spezza scored his second goal of the game to take the score to 3-0.
Spezza attributed the victory with collective efforts and appreciated the performance of all his teammates.
"I think we've stuck with it in games", Spezza remarked.
"We've had great goaltending. We've had timely goals from everybody. We've had contributions from the whole group”.
The Rangers, who are leading the Eastern Conference, are now going to face Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday.
After beating Philadelphia Flyers (6-4) and Pittsburgh Penguins (5-1), it was the third straight win for the Senators who rank at the fifth number spot in the Eastern Conference. They face the Montreal Canadiens in their next contest.
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