It certainly wasn’t the performance that Ottawa Senators goalie Linus Ullmark was hoping for.
Ullmark was back in goal on Friday night for the first time in almost two weeks and was hard on himself after a 6-4 road loss to the Vegas Golden Knights. The Sens had outplayed Vegas for over 56 minutes and held a 4-3 lead before the Knights stormed back with three straight goals to win. Ullmark stopped 22 of 27 shots on the night.
“If they had a capable goalie in there today, they would have won 4-3, I would say,” Ullmark said. “It’s way too sloppy to be in this league.
Ullmark was particularly displeased with himself on the Knights’ tying and game-winning goals. That late in the game, each of those goals effectively cost the Sens a point in the standings.
“This is a type of game where you have to rely on your goaltender to shut the door and not let in those two at the end to cause us to lose the game. And I take it upon myself, it’s always what I do, I never try to put any blame on anyone else, they try the very best out there in front of me. And then it’s my job to make the saves when it’s needed.”
As the rest of the league starts to round into form, Ullmark has fallen behind a little, sidelined since October 12th with what’s believed to be a nagging lower-body injury. This was just his third appearance of the season and while rust was a factor to some degree, he refused to use that as an excuse.
“I’ve played this game for too long to have those excuses when you’ve been away or something like that. But yeah, it stinks. That’s all I gotta say, it stinks. It’s one of those games where you really felt that we deserve to win that one.”
In fairness, Ullmark did make some great third period saves, including a breakaway stop on Alexander Holtz (see banner photo above), which was celebrated at the time by the TV analysts as an example of “making the big saves as critical times in games.”
Furthermore, Ullmark had no chance to react on the Tomas Hertl power play goal that tied to the game. No one makes saves on one-timers directly in front of the net, ten feet out, they just hope the puck hits them. And if you slow down the replay of the Keegan Kolesar’s game-winning goal, it looks like the puck may have deflected off Travis Hamonic’s skate or stick.
One of the things that Ullmark has talked about since arriving in Ottawa is that he doesn’t dwell on the past, something he believes is one of his strengths as a goaltender. He’s now looking forward to the challenge of playing the Avalanche in Colorado on Sunday night.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be fun,” Ullmark said. “That’s the thing, it’s the beauty of this league as well. There’s 82 games, so you don’t really have time to dwell about the past. So I’ll be pissed off today, but then tomorrow I hope the sun is gonna shine in Denver, and I’m looking forward to that one.”
That’s the right attitude after a heartbreaker like that. Move forward, leave it behind.
What happened in Vegas stays in Vegas.
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