EDMONTON — The Ottawa Senators weren’t about to give up another point in extra time.
Mike Hoffman scored a pair of goals, including the overtime winner, as the Ottawa Senators snapped a three-game losing skid, hanging on for a 4-3 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night.
Hoffman sent a shot from the slot under the arm of Oilers goalie Ben Scrivens 2:39 into overtime to preserve the win for the Senators, who had let a 3-0 lead slip away and had lost in extra time in two of their three previous games.
“We weren’t going to let that one slip away in overtime. The last couple games we went to overtime we did,’’ said Senator forward Curtis Lazar, who picked up an assist on the winning goal. “It was a great shot by Hoffman.’’
Ottawa head coach Paul MacLean said his team couldn’t afford to let any more points get away from them during this stretch.
“At the end of the day, we found a way to win a game on the road,’’ he said. “It was a great effort by the team. You don’t make up ground or get ahead in this league by getting one point. You have to do it by twos. We have to make sure that we take our wins when we can get them.’’
Alex Chiasson and Milan Michalek also scored for the Senators (8-4-4) who are 3-1-2 in their last six outings.
Leon Draisaitl, Jordan Eberle and Jeff Petry responded for the Oilers (6-9-2) who have lost two in a row, but were pleased to battle back and capture at least a point.
“It’s good that we didn’t just throw in the towel and say they can just have this one,’’ said Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who picked up a pair of assists. “We battled back hard against Nashville (a 3-2 loss after also trailing 3-0 in the first period on Tuesday) and we did the same tonight. We got a point out of this tonight. We showed some good things there for sure, but those things can’t happen, we can’t go out there and get down three. We have to go out there, especially at home and build off the lead right off the start.’’
Petry said the way the team battled back is a good sign.
“In past years we might have packed it in, but it shows a lot of fight in this team,’’ he said. “We’re never going to give up and we showed it tonight. We came in here after the first period and we knew we had a lot of hockey left to play. It wasn’t the start we wanted, but we still had 40 minutes to respond and I thought we responded well.’’
Ottawa got on the board three-and-a-half minutes into the game after Cody Ceci picked off a poor clearing attempt by Edmonton and fed it to Hoffman, who used defender Justin Schultz as a screen to cleanly beat Scrivens with a wrist shot. It was the third consecutive game Hoffman has scored a goal.
The Senators took a 2-0 lead with seven minutes remaining in the opening frame as Chiasson tipped a Chris Phillips shot from just above the top of the circle into the net for his fourth of the season.
Edmonton had a chance to get one of those goals back a minute later but Mark Arcobello fanned on a shot with a wide-open net to shoot at before Senators starter Craig Anderson could get across.
Ottawa took a three-goal lead with four minutes left in the first as Bobby Ryan made a nice pass across to Michalek, who beat Scrivens high to the stick side with a bullet of a shot.
The Sens outshot the Oilers 17-7 in the first.
Edmonton finally got some momentum with seven minutes remaining in the second period as Draisaitl chipped in the rebound of a David Perron power-play shot for the second goal of his NHL career.
The Oilers closed the shots to 23-20 in Ottawa’s favour after 40 minutes.
Edmonton got to within a goal midway through the third after Eberle was able to tuck in a loose puck during a mad scramble in front of Anderson in the Ottawa net.
It was Eberle’s 100th career NHL goal.