Ottawa Senators get best of Ondrej Pavelec, outscore Winnipeg Jets 6-4 -NHL Update
Winnipeg goalie, Ondrej Pavelec, was clearly not having the best night of his career in the National Hockey League (NHL) and fell short on five of 33 shots he faced on his net to allow the Ottawa Senators to win, 6-4, over the Jets on Tuesday night, November
29, 2011, at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, United States.
Trying out different things and eventually finding a way to win by breaking Pavalec’s defences was what Ottawa had to do in order to take the match.
“We bent a bit,” Ottawa coach Paul MacLean said, “and bent a lot, but we didn't break. At the end of the night, we found a way to win the game. That's a great part of the learning curve for our team, learning how to win, especially learning how to win on
the road.”
Milan Michalek scored his 13th goal of the 2011-2012 NHL regular season with less than five minutes to play in the opening period to put the visiting team ahead by one entering the second period of play.
Winnipeg came out strong in the second period as Blake Wheeler and Alex Burmistrov scored two straight nearly 10 minutes apart to give the Jets a one-point lead over the Senators, who took advantage of the sloppy opposing defence by getting two consecutive
goals of their own.
Zack Smith scored less than 40 seconds after Burmistrov while Michalek got his second of the night at the 19:16 mark for the tie-breaker in favour of the Senators.
Evander Kane tried to bring back Winnipeg in the match by firing off two back-to-back goals nearly a minute apart, including a second goal on their first power play advantage of the third period but as Jason Spezza, Zack Smith and Nick Foligno potted three
more for Ottawa, it was of no use after being down by two with 1:08 remaining.
"To tell you I’m disappointed would be putting it mildly,” Winnipeg coach Claude Noel said. “I didn’t think we played very intelligently. We didn’t play certainly with our minds. We had some energy but I thought it was a poor game in a lot of areas.”