By Canadian Press

Craig Anderson earns 27-save shutout as Senators blank Rangers 3-0

Nov 29, 2018 | 8:21 PM

OTTAWA — Craig Anderson is not one to show his emotions, but you could hardly blame the Ottawa Senators goaltender for wanting to celebrate Thursday night.

Anderson raised his arms and pumped his fists after stopping all 27 shots he faced for his first shutout of the season as the Ottawa Senators blanked the New York Rangers 3-0 on Thursday night.

It was Anderson’s 10th win of the season, his first shutout since Dec. 16 and 41st clean sheet of his career.

“It’s been a while for me,” said Anderson. “Sometimes when you’ve given up a lot of goals and you get caught up in the whole statistic of things and you try not to as best you can, but tonight was one of those nights where everything kind of came together and it’s just my emotions towards the guys.”

This marked just the third time this season that the Senators held an opponent to 30 shots or less

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“That’s a great effort by everyone,” said an animated Anderson. “I thought the guys attention to detail was outstanding, we generated plenty of scoring chances, made some pretty plays in the offensive zone and defensively we were paying the price doing the little things, making the right plays, making the right reads.”

Matt Duchene led Ottawa (11-12-3) with a goal and an assist.

Drake Batherson and Magnus Paajarvi also scored as the Senators won their second game in a row, having beat Philadelphia 4-3 on Tuesday.

“It was a total team commitment from beginning to end,” said head coach Guy Boucher. “Even at the end you could see guys blocking shots with 30 seconds left. That’s what we’re going towards.”

Henrik Lundqvist had a rough start, but finished with 31 saves for New York (13-11-2). Lundqvist gave the Senators full credit saying, “they deserved the win” and that the Rangers need to be better on the road as they now drop to 3-7-2.

“I feel like it’s not just one game, it’s starting to become a road thing,” admitted Lundqvist. “It’s something we need to adjust and correct real quick.”

Rangers head coach David Quinn felt his team got worse rather than better as the game went on after falling behind 2-0 in the first period.

“During the course of a game there’s going to be stretches where you don’t play well,” said Quinn. “You hope to make them better. You hope to stop them and recover, be mentally tough enough to get your wits about and you and regroup and we just never did it. We just got worse and worse and worse as the game went on.”

Often overlooked, Boucher credited his fourth line of Paajarvi, Zack Smith and Tom Pyatt for doing an outstanding job against New York’s top line of Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad and Ryan Strome.

“They were great defensively, but also really good offensively,” said Boucher. “Their line set the tone for everything and really did a great job against the opponent’s top line and that’s the difference.”

Trailing 2-0 the Rangers thought they had cut the Senators lead in half near the midway point of the period, but the goal was waved off as the referee had blown the whistle prior to the puck crossing the line.

With the Senators dominating most of the action Colin White nearly made it 3-0 ringing a shot off the post.

Ottawa did take a 3-0 lead late in the second off an impressive passing display that ended with Duchene scoring his team-leading 12th.

Duchene has eight goals and 14 assists in his last 12 games.

With an assist on Duchene’s goal Ryan Dzingel picked up his 100th career point.

The Senators jumped out to a 2-0 first period lead.

Batherson scored his third of the season off a great pass from Duchene in the second minute of the game, while Paajarvi made it 2-0 with his second of the year and first point in 11 games as he snuck a shot under Lundqvist’s right arm.

On Saturday the Senators will host the San Jose Sharks marking the return of former Ottawa captain Erik Karlsson.

Notes: Max McCormick was a healthy scratch for the Senators.

Lisa Wallace, The Canadian Press