Senators turn a scoreless start into a 4-1 win over the Devils behind Ullmark and timely finishing

Nine seconds set the tone

The game changed almost immediately after the intermission. With the first period ending without a goal, Ottawa needed only nine seconds of the second to move in front when Shane Pinto scored on a wrist shot, with Michael Amadio and Claude Giroux collecting the assists. It was the kind of restart that can reset an entire night, and Ottawa followed it by making its next opening count as well.

Stephen Halliday doubled the lead at 8:40 of the second period, finishing a play set up by Tim Stützle and Dylan Cozens. That gave Ottawa a 2-0 cushion despite generating only 20 shots across the evening, a reminder that this result was built more on conversion than on volume. Halliday's finish mattered because it forced New Jersey to chase from two goals down instead of settling back into a one-shot game.

Ottawa added the decisive third goal at 11:10 of the final period when Stützle tipped in a shot from Thomas Chabot, with Jordan Spence drawing the second assist. New Jersey finally answered at 14:59 through Arseny Gritsyuk, whose wrist shot from Jack Hughes made it 3-1 and briefly gave the Devils a path back into the game. Tyler Kleven's unassisted goal at 17:53 shut that door and restored the three-goal margin for good.

Ullmark handled the volume, Ottawa handled the lanes

The Devils finished with a 30-20 edge in shots, but Linus Ullmark turned that pressure into a footnote. He stopped 29 of 30 for a .967 save percentage, allowing only Gritsyuk's third-period goal. On a night when New Jersey kept pucks coming, Ottawa received exactly the kind of composed goaltending that allows a lower-shot team to stay in command of the score.

Ullmark also had considerable help in front of him. Ottawa blocked 29 shots, more than double New Jersey's 13, and that total says a great deal about how the Senators protected their lead once they had it. Chabot led the way with five blocks, Kleven had four, and Halliday, Stützle and Spence added three apiece. Those layers mattered because New Jersey did create volume, but too much of that push ran into a body before it reached the net or into Ullmark when it did.

Special teams and discipline reinforced the gap. Ottawa went 1-for-5 on the power play, while New Jersey went 0-for-2. The Devils also handed Ottawa more opportunities by taking five penalties for 13 minutes, compared with two minors and four penalty minutes for the Senators. Add in Ottawa's slight edge on faceoffs at 51.9 per cent, and the visitors found enough of the small advantages to keep the game tilted their way.

Our take: Ottawa was efficient; New Jersey made the night harder on itself

This was a practical, mature kind of win from Ottawa. The Senators did not need a flood of chances or a runaway shot total. They received strong finishing from Pinto, Halliday, Stützle and Kleven, got a goal and an assist from Stützle, and spread six assists across six different skaters. When a team can combine that balanced scoring with a .967 night from its goaltender, it does not need to dominate every category to control the result.

If there is a caution inside Ottawa's victory, it is the giveaway count. The Senators were charged with 15 giveaways, three more than New Jersey, and that is the sort of number that can make future nights more complicated than this one became. Against the Devils, the shot blocking and Ullmark erased most of the damage. Against a sharper finishing team, that margin for error can shrink quickly.

For New Jersey, the outline of a better performance is straightforward. Thirty shots should give a team more than one goal, and an 0-for-2 power play did not rescue the evening when the game was still within reach. Just as important, the Devils spent too much time in the penalty box and did not get enough reward from their territorial push. Gritsyuk's goal and Hughes' assist kept the score from turning into a shutout, but the larger lesson from this 4-1 loss is that volume alone was never enough to overcome Ottawa's finishing and structure.

Scoring moments

1. 2nd · 0:09

   Shane Pinto Goal (1) Wrist Shot, assists: Michael Amadio (2), Claude Giroux (4)

2. 2nd · 8:40

   Stephen Halliday Goal (2) Wrist Shot, assists: Tim Stützle (5), Dylan Cozens (2)

3. 3rd · 11:10

   Tim Stützle Goal (5) Tip-In, assists: Thomas Chabot (3), Jordan Spence (1)

4. 3rd · 14:59

   Arseny Gritsyuk Goal (1) Wrist Shot, assists: Jack Hughes (4)

5. 3rd · 17:53

   Tyler Kleven Goal (1) Wrist Shot, assists: none