Nobody saw that ending coming against the Calgary Flames, especially the trickle of fans heading for the exits.
“Lightning in a bottle,” said Senators head coach D.J. Smith, after seeing his team get outplayed and outshot for 57 minutes before stealing the night with a late flourish.
“Crazy game,” said Senators winger Drake Batherson, who scored the first of two goals for the Senators with their goaltender pulled in the final three minutes.
Alex DeBrincat got the other, a snipe at 18:32 to tie the game 3-3. Tim Stützle scored the winner in overtime, after a spectacular save by callup goaltender Mads Sogaard to keep his team alive.
“With four or five minutes left, you kind of see a few people leaving and before you know it, it’s tied up,” Batherson said. “It’s awesome. We haven’t scored many 6-on-5 goals since I’ve been here. And the place went nuts. It was great to get the win.”
In his fourth career NHL game, Sogaard stopped 34 of 37 Flames shots to record his first home-ice win as a Senators goaltender. A crowd of 15,024 watched the comeback victory and Sogaard’s big night at the Canadian Tire Centre.
“It’s not every day you get to live your dream, so I was just trying to have as much fun as possible and treat it as another game,” Sogaard said. “The preparation has been identical for the past five, six years. So that helped me a lot to dial in . . . it was crazy to hear the crowd when we scored the OT winner.”
It was fitting for Stützle to get the winner for Sogaard, as he blew a wrist shot through Flames goaltender Jacob Markstrom. Stützle has gone out of his way to make Sogaard comfortable since being recalled from Belleville due to injuries in Ottawa.
“He’s a great goalie, a big guy and an awesome guy,” Stützle said of his Danish friend. “I’m really happy to see him get his first home win here and I couldn’t be more excited to see him play the way he played.”
Sogaard got into the game early, staring down Dillon Dube breaking down the left side. Dube fired a shot that Sogaard stopped with his glove, though not cleanly. It was enough to get him into the game.
Staked to a 1-0 lead on a Brady Tkachuk breakaway goal, Sogaard kept the Flames off the board until Dube got his revenge by tipping a shot past Sogaard on a Calgary power play at 14:47 of the first period. Dube added another goal in the third period, and the Flames were in complete control until the final furious minutes.
The Senators vowed to protect the 22-year-old goalie, and that was a mixed venture.
The task was made more difficult by the loss of rookie defenceman Jake Sanderson, Ottawa’s most reliable defender despite his lack of experience. The Sens spent most of the evening in their own end.
“That’s a really good hockey team,” Smith said, in praise of the Flames. “That’s four lines of big guys that put it in time after time . . . their D are big, they’re competitive.
“Obviously we caught lightning in a bottle there the last five minutes and we’ve got some big game players.”
DeBrincat’s goal from a sharp angle was a goal-scorer-issued beauty. At that moment, it felt like Ottawa was going to win this one, somehow, unlikely as that had seemed just minutes earlier.
Over the first 40, the Senators didn’t muster any sustained pressure on Markstrom, as the Flames outshot Ottawa 27-11 for the first two periods. T
yler Toffoli, who used to be a junior star for the 67’s just across town at the old Civic Centre, rifled a wrist shot past Sogaard’s glove at 5:55 of the second period to put Calgary ahead 2-1.
The Senators had just killed a power play but Calgary cashed in on the leftover momentum to get its first lead of the night. Sogaard played well enough to keep his team around, allowing for the late dramatics.
Sogaard’s opportunity is born of a crisis – injuries to Ottawa’s top two goaltenders, Cam Talbot and Anton Forsberg.
On Saturday, Forsberg had to be carted off the ice after suffering MCL tears to both knees after Edmonton’s Zach Hyman fell on him in the Oilers’ 6-3 win.
Selected by Ottawa in the second round of the 2019 draft, 37th overall, Sogaard is a towering figure at six-foot-seven. He had already shown an affinity for the North American game while with the Medicine Hat Tigers of the WHL.
The Senators hoped this native of Aalborg, Denmark would not just be a great-big-Dane but a great Dane. Ottawa has had a history of difficulty drafting a starting goalie, and the thinking in the organization was that Sogaard could be the guy.
Like many young goalies, Sogaard has had his challenges adapting to pro hockey, although his career started well. After spending most of the 2020-21 season in Denmark, to get in more games during the pandemic, Sogaard made his AHL debut in late spring of 2021 and was terrific in his seven starts – 7-0-0 with a .917 save percentage and 2.40 goals-against.
The next season he was expected to get the bulk of the starts, but injuries reduced the workload to about half his team’s games. Sogaard was good when healthy, finishing the season at 19-14-1, with a .908 save percentage and 2.86 goals-against average.
This season he was again given the chance to carry the load in Belleville, but it hasn’t worked out. Injuries have limited Sogaard’s appearances to 21 of the B-Sens 46 games, and his numbers have slipped to 6-9-2, .898, 3.30 for a Belleville team that is in last place in the North Division.
No one expects Sogaard to go on a Hamburglar-esque run to carry the Senators to the playoffs, although the circumstances are similar. When Andrew Hammond stepped into the breach in mid-February of the 2014-15 season, it was on an emergency basis after Craig Anderson and Robin Lehner got hurt.
Today Ottawa is again missing its two starters. Sidelined since Jan. 25 with a suspected groin injury, Talbot could return as early as next week.
While Hammond shocked the hockey world by going 20-1-2 with a .941 save percentage and 1.79 goals against that season, he was struggling in the minors when recalled, just like Sogaard. Hammond’s save percentage in the AHL (with Binghamton) that season was identical to Sogaard’s .898. Hammond also had a losing record (7-13-2) and allowed 3.51 goals per game, worse than Sogaard’s 3.30 GAA.
“There’s no secret that it’s obviously an opportunity,” Sogaard told reporters after a Sunday practice. “You know, I’m not Andrew Hammond. I’m just me. I try to do my own thing and I’m trying to help this team as much as possible to win hockey games and give the team a chance.”
So far, so good. Given a fresh slate in a higher league, Sogaard is 1-0 with a .925 save percentage with the Senators.
The betting is he gets the next start as well, Tuesday in Long Island.
