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Friday, October 8, 1999
Tugnutt tosses shutout in relief
The Senators' new goaltender was coming off two wins, the second of which he pretty much earned on his own against the New York Rangers Tuesday night.
His evening lasted less than 12 minutes last night.
That's streaky, all right.
Ron Tugnutt, who had hunkered down at the end of the bench and had last played in a game six months ago, got the nod from Senators coach Jacques Martin after the Boston Bruins scored on their sixth and seventh shots of the game.
If you expected the Senators to get some kind of early emotional lift from the pre-game unveiling of their Northeast Division championship banner, you were disappointed.
RAFTER WATCHING
They played the first five minutes of the game like they were still looking up into the rafters.
You couldn't really blame Lalime for what happened as Boston raced out to a 2-0 lead before the game was six minutes old.
The Senators were remarkably soft in their defensive zone coverage, leaving Lalime to face a couple of point-blank attempts.
On the first one, he stopped Rob DiMaio's first shot and maybe served up a bit too juicy a rebound. But big Joe Thornton should have been stopped on the way to the net and not allowed to chip the puck up and over Lalime's shoulder.
On the second one, Senators defenceman Chris Phillips should have attacked Thornton more aggressively when the two found themselves at the Ottawa blue line during a Boston line change. Thornton had the time to look over his shoulder, see what in the way of help was coming from the B's bench and then bought himself more time by taking it wide to the left wing. He held the puck and held the puck until he whipped it out front to DiMaio, who was pounding to the net.
Senators defenceman Janne Laukkanen and centre Vaclav Prospal were in the neighbourhood, but Lalime was left alone as DiMaio knocked it in.
Dave Andreychuk did what he's been doing for 20 years when he parked himself on the doorstep and swept one home on the power play to make it 3-1.
Martin had seen enough and put out the hook.
The line on Lalime, seven shots, three goals, one spoiled home debut.
Tugnutt came in and played spectacularly, sprawling to make a couple of big saves, which must have done wonders for his confidence which had been shaken by the nagging ligament strain in his left knee.
Tugnutt missed all but a couple of practices in training camp and had only a couple of good skates under his belt going into last night.
He got a bit of a scare in the third when a Bruins player barrelled into the crease, upsetting him and the net. Tugnutt was slow getting up, but looked for the rest of the night that he had two good legs to stand on.
SENS SETTLE DOWN
With Tugnutt in the net, the Senators seemed to settle down and get back to their controlled, puck-pressure game. They whittled away at the Bruins. Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson got his first of the season less than five minutes after the goalie switch at 16:23 of the first period.
Just over a minute into the second, Alfredsson got his second, on the power play, as he let one go from the slot with Shawn McEachern screening Robbie Tallas in the Boston net.
After Hossa gave the Senators the lead with his third goal in two games, it was up to Tugnutt to turn out the lights.
He came up with another solid save on Andreychuk during a penalty to Ottawa defenceman Jason York.
Tugnutt wanted to face some good, hard shots, he said, before he'd be ready to play in a game.
He got the shots last night, probably not exactly the way he planned it.
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