By: Davide Disipio
Ottawa, ON– The Ottawa Jr. Senators (17-8-1) were edged out on home ice by a score of 3-1, falling to the Carleton Place Canadians (22-3-2) to open up a series of big matchups for Ottawa this week.
Ottawa got off to a hot start, testing Carleton Place goaltender Devon Levi (win, 18-1-4) but came empty-handed offensively. In between the pipes for Ottawa, Bryan Landsberger (loss, 6-3-1) had another solid outing stopping 26 of 28.
After a scoreless first, Carleton Place would open up the scoring off a Bailey Brant turnover, when Ayo Adeniye’s point shot was tipped by Andrej Hromic to make it 1-0 exactly halfway through the second period.
“They’re a really good team,” said Ottawa Head Coach Martin Dagenais. “We were undermanned tonight, but I thought we worked hard, just made some mental mistakes. I thought we were good until halfway through the third when they’re a good team and they stepped up and didn’t allow us to do much. We were stuck in the D zone, made two mistakes on the same shift, and that was the game-winner.”
Ottawa used a strong ending to a second period that was heavily dominated by Carleton Place to begin the third when Ethan Mulhearn tapped home an unassisted goal just 22 seconds into the third for his eighth of the year to tie the game at one. It would be the only time Ottawa could capitalize when only having nine shots throughout the last 40 minutes.
Just after a Carleton Place powerplay expired, a couple of turnovers behind the net lead to Cameron Patton stealing the puck and feeding the CCHL’s leading scorer in Ryland Mosley to bury the eventual game-winner over the left shoulder of Landsberger with under five minutes to play.
“If you look at us both (teams), and the back end, they’re way older than we are. You can see that lack of experience tonight. We got some young defenceman, they’re just not used to that pace of play. I do think our young guys will keep improving, but I think this is a good experience, win or lose it just shows we can compete with them, and we did miss some guys to bolster us upfront,” also added Dagenais after turnovers were the achilles heel to both Carleton Place goals.
With the Ottawa net empty, Elliott McDermott stole the puck from behind the Ottawa net to record an insurance marker with 10 seconds to play.
Both teams went 0-for-2 on the powerplay, with Carleton Place outshooting Ottawa 29-16.
Ottawa continues this tough stretch with a road trip to the Madhouse on Friday to take on the Brockville Braves for a 7:30 faceoff on the Jr. Senators broadcast network at mixlr.com/ojsradio and Hockey TV.
