The Ottawa Senators needed someone to step up, so Mark Stone volunteered.
Stone had two goals and three assists as the Senators beat the New Jersey Devils 7-3 on Tuesday to avoid their third straight loss.
“I think we’ve lost six out of seven games so we needed a win. We haven’t been playing our best hockey so maybe this can help this team move forward,” Stone said.
Colin White also had two goals while Thomas Chabot, Ryan Dzingel and Magnus Paajarvi, into an empty net, had the other Senators (6-6-3) goals. Craig Anderson made 30 saves before he was replaced by Mike McKenna (six saves) for the final five minutes. Chabot also had two assists while Matt Duchene had three.
Taylor Hall, Kyle Palmieri and Travis Zajac scored for the Devils (6-6-1), who haven’t won consecutive games since starting the season with four straight wins.
Cory Schneider started in goal for the Devils but was replaced by Keith Kinkaid in the second period after allowing four goals on 22 shots. Kinkaid turned aside 17 shots in relief.
It was Ottawa’s first game since a viral video showing seven Senators players criticizing the team and assistant coach Martin Raymond during an Uber ride was posted online.
Duchene apologized following the game and said it was impressive how the team responded despite the difficult situation.
“Once we got that first (goal) I thought we did a good job pushing back and imposing our game on them,” Duchene said.
“We kept the hammer down and we didn’t change our game, even when it was close, and that’s the type of hockey that we need to play.”
Dzingel gave the Senators a 6-2 lead at 10:11 of the third before Zajac made it 6-3 at 14:13. Paarjarvi got his first point of the season with an empty-net goal at 18:01. Ottawa had been outscored 21-12 in third periods prior to Tuesday.
Hall got the game’s first goal as he used a toe drag to bring the puck into the slot and fire a shot past the glove hand of Anderson just 3:14 into the game.
That lead was doubled at 11:20 when Palmieri deposited a backhand off a rebound past Anderson, but for the next 48 minutes it was all Senators.
“Those first 10 minutes we got rewarded for what we wanted to do. We were playing with speed, we were playing a north-south game and we were getting rewarded. You’d think it would be easier that way to just stick with it,” Devils captain Andy Greene said.
“All of a sudden we were moving east-west, we stopped moving our feet and that seems to be the problem. The way we were playing you’d think we’d stick with a north-south game.”
Chabot scored on a point shot at 12:05 and then Stone tied the game 2-2 just 53 seconds later on a beautiful backhand pass from Duchene across the crease.
The Senators scored three times in the second period and it started just 2:27 in when White had a tap in after a terrific cross-crease pass from Stone.
Stone scored his second of the game and at the same time chased Schneider from the New Jersey net at 7:35. Schneider was replaced by Kinkaid, who surrendered a power-play goal to White on the third shot he faced with less than three minutes to play in the period.