Down to 4 defensemen, Senators hold the Rangers to the fewest shots by an NHL team since 2003

NEW YORK (AP) — James Reimer kept expecting the New York Rangers to put shots on net.

They rarely did.

And by the end of the game Monday night, the Ottawa Senators had allowed just nine shots on goal in a 2-1 victory at Madison Square Garden. It was the fewest shots against in franchise history, the Rangers’ lowest output since 1955 — and the worst by any NHL team in more than two decades, predating the salary cap.

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“The boys played great,” said Reimer, the Ottawa goalie.

Even more impressive, they did so after losing two more players to injury and playing more than half the game with just four defensemen. Thomas Chabot left in the final seconds of the first period after taking a stick to the right arm from Rangers captain J.T. Miller, and Lassi Thomson exited his first game in the league since Nov. 25, 2022, with an undisclosed lower-body injury in the second.

“Whenever you get down to four D-men and you find a way to win, it’s a gutsy effort,” said Warren Foegele, who scored his fifth goal in nine games since joining Ottawa ahead of the trade deadline in a deal from Los Angeles. “The whole group stepped up when those guys went down.”

Chabot and Thomson will “both be out for a while,” according to coach Travis Green, who expects the team to call up two reinforcements Tuesday before playing at Detroit in a key matchup of teams fighting to make the Eastern Conference playoffs.

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Ottawa was already without two of its top four defensemen, with Jake Sanderson possibly out another week and Nick Jensen recovering from knee surgery.

In their absence, Jordan Spence skated a career-high 26 minutes, 44 seconds. Tyler Kleven played 24:30, Artem Zub 23:44 and Nikolas Matinpalo 18:19.

“With two defensemen going down, guys have to step up, play a lot more minutes than they’re used to,” Green said. “Give them all credit. They played a hell of a game back there.”

Spence did not realize just how much ice time he was logging and was more focused on Chabot’s departure.

“Chabby just doing how well he was doing and seeing that, it’s unfortunate,” Spence said. “We’re trying to win a…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/down-4-defensemen-senators-hold-035155054.html

Author : STEPHEN WHYNO

Publish date : 2026-03-24 03:51:00

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