To win at the casino, you have to cash out, you don’t keep gambling. In the casino center of the world, Las Vegas, the Ottawa Senators played high-risk, low-reward hockey on Nevada Day. It was a shadow of a team that has often struggled to hold onto leads in recent years.

For most of Friday night’s game, the Senators outscored, outplayed and outscored the Vegas Golden Knights 39 to 28. Nevertheless, when the Senators earned the lead, they were unable to carry their game to completion. In the NHL, good teams find ways to score points and win; the Senators lost three leads and lost 6-4.

“That was a hard-fought game,” Senators coach Travis Green said. “We probably deserve better than no points from that game.”

The earn-to-win-o-meter does not correspond to two points in the rankings. The Senators had only themselves to blame. It was their best players who let them down with silly turnovers, mistakes and costly penalties. For a team looking to get to the ‘next level’, their lack of game management was glaring.

The Senators started the game strong, earning an early 2-0 lead, but lost it in 21 seconds. It started when their two stars, Brady Tkachuk and Tim Stützle, jumped to their own blueline to cheat for a foul, leaving Vegas’ Nicolas Roy all alone to score. Seconds later, after Nicolas Haag’s slapshot bounced badly off Jake Sanderson’s leg, the score was 2-2. Momentum lost.

The Sens regained the lead 3-2. But this time, Sanderson, who was Ottawa’s best player for six games, threw a misdirected exit pass directly to the league’s leading puck-stealer, Mark Stone, in hopes of sparking a counterattack. The turnover was punished with a tip shot from Ivan Barbashev to tie the game at 3-3.

Midway through the game, Green decided to demote Michael Amadio to the third line in his first return to Vegas, where he won a Stanley Cup in 2023. Nick Cousins ​​moved to the first line with Stützle and Tkachuk and all three were dynamite. defeated Vegas 7-1.

Nevertheless, Cousins ​​was the catalyst for the late-game collapse with a nervous breakdown after the Senators regained the lead for the third time, 4–3. He took an ill-advised interference penalty with 5:05 left in the game, at a point where the Senators had held Vegas to just six shots in that period. It was a penalty that just can’t happen when a team is trying to hold onto a lead late.

Vegas took advantage of the power play to tie the game 4-4. A minute later, instead of dumping the puck in the Vegas zone to earn a point, young Ridly Greig decided to take the puck to the net, leading to a turnover. Vegas raced down the ice to score on an odd rush finished by Keegan Kolesar, giving the Knights a 5-4 lead with 2:11 left in the game, clinching the win.

“We made a few mistakes that we would probably like to get back,” Green said.

It is not just one leak, but several small leaks that can sink a ship. The Senators consistently gambled and were careless when they took the lead.

It’s the story of their season. Against the LA Kings, they let a 7-6 lead slip away in a barn burner late in the third. The same thing happened against the Tampa Bay Lightning as they let 2-0 and 3-2 leads fade away, though they eventually secured an instant 5-4 win. Ultimately, good teams don’t consistently blow leads; the Senators will have to become game managers instead of marksmen.

The return of Linus Ullmark

It was a long-awaited return to the crease for star netminder Linus Ullmark, who had missed the previous four games with overexertion. He allowed five goals on 27 shots. It wasn’t his best performance, and the goalkeeper was clear about that.

“If (the Senators) had a capable goaltender today, I would say they would have won 4-3,” Ullmark said.

At first glance, Ullmark’s opinion of his piece seems hypercritical. He gave up one goal on a puck that sailed wide and hit a defender to find the back of the net, while another goal came from a deflected shot. The goals he allowed were top-notch chances that Vegas capitalized on.

“Way too sloppy,” Owlmark said of his performance. “And in this competition, in these types of games you have to trust that the goalkeeper will close the door. And I let those two take it on me at the end, and we lose the game.”

Interestingly enough, if you dig into the numbers you can see where Ullmark is coming from. According to MoneyPuck.com, he saved a goal of -3.05 above expectations. According to naturalstattrick.com, he only saved three of six high-danger chances, while allowing one medium-danger goal and one low-danger goal.

But his coach disagreed with Ullmark’s assessment.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Green said. “You want your goalkeeper to feel like he can win the game for you. I don’t think he had to win the game for us.”

For the first time in a long time, the Senators’ goaltending wasn’t the cause of their failure.

Compliments for the fourth line

As disappointing as the result was, there were positives against the Golden Knights, especially from the fourth line. A next-man-up mentality is starting to take shape on this Senators team. Cole Reinhardt replaced the injured Shane Pinto, who was scratched due to an undisclosed injury, and made a heads-up behind-the-back pass to Adam Gaudette in the first two minutes of the match. When Gaudette snuck past a forlorn Vegas goalie Adin Hill, it gave the rookie Reinhardt his first career point in just his second NHL game.

The Reinhard-Gaudette-MacEwen line outscored Vegas 9-4 while playing the third-most time of any Senators forward.

“You want to feel confident with your fourth line,” Green said. “And tonight, with Reinhardt there, I wanted to see how he fit into the game. And I thought he gave us some good minutes as well.”

Later, Gaudette – who scored 44 goals in the American Hockey League last season – raced across the ice on the power play to fire a rocket past Hill and give the Senators a 4-3 lead. It seemed like the winner of the match for a while. Gaudette’s two goals were his first since the 2021-2022 season, which oddly enough were scored for the same team: the Ottawa Senators.