{"id":557796,"date":"2026-03-24T16:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/557796\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T16:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:09:08","slug":"senators-hold-rangers-to-fewest-shots-by-an-nhl-team-since-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/557796\/","title":{"rendered":"Senators hold Rangers to fewest shots by an NHL team since 2003"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 James Reimer<\/a> kept expecting the New York Rangers<\/a> to put shots on net. <\/p>\n

They rarely did. <\/p>\n

And by the end of Monday\u2019s game, the Ottawa Senators<\/a> 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\u2019 lowest output since 1955 \u2014 and the worst by any NHL team in more than two decades, predating the salary cap.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe boys played great,\u201d said Reimer, the Ottawa goaltender.<\/p>\n

Even more impressive, they did so after losing two more players to injury and playing more than half the game with just four defencemen.<\/p>\n

Thomas Chabot<\/a> left in the final seconds of the first period after taking a stick to the right arm from Rangers captain J.T. Miller<\/a>, and Lassi Thomson<\/a> exited his first game in the league since Nov. 25, 2022, with an undisclosed lower-body injury in the second.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever you get down to four D-men and you find a way to win, it\u2019s a gutsy effort,\u201d said Warren Foegele<\/a>, who scored his fifth goal in nine games since joining Ottawa ahead of the trade deadline in a deal from Los Angeles. \u201dThe whole group stepped up when those guys went down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chabot and Thomson will \u201cboth be out for a while,\u201d according to coach Travis Green<\/a>, who expects the team to call up two reinforcements Tuesday before playing at Detroit in a key matchup of teams fighting to make the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Ottawa was already without two of its top four defencemen, with Jake Sanderson<\/a> possibly out another week and Nick Jensen<\/a> recovering from knee surgery.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cWith two defencemen going down, guys have to step up, play a lot more minutes than they\u2019re used to,\u201d Green said. \u201cGive them all credit. They played a hell of a game back there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spence did not realize just how much ice time he was logging and was more focused on Chabot\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n

\u201cChabby just doing how well he was doing and seeing that, it\u2019s unfortunate,\u201d Spence said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to win a game, so we kind of had to forget about that and try and do the best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Senators became the first team since the salary-cap era began in 2005-06 to hold an opponent under 10 shots. New Jersey allowed Washington to put only nine on net on Dec. 4, 2003.<\/p>\n

Shots on goal did not become an official statistic tracked by the league until 1959-60. The Rangers\u2019 record book listed their single-game lowest total as nine in a loss at Detroit on Dec. 11, 1955.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were better than us,\u201d Miller said, lamenting the performance after celebrating teammate Mika Zibanejad<\/a>\u2019s 1,000th regular-season game. \u201cWe just didn\u2019t have it. I don\u2019t know what to say. We got outplayed, got outcompeted \u2014 things that we\u2019re just not OK with as a group.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since starting a run back into the playoff race on Jan. 25, the Senators have allowed the fewest shots against in the NHL at just over 21 per game. They gave up only 14 while beating rival Toronto on Saturday and 19 on Thursday against the New York Islanders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s part of our structure,\u201d Spence said. \u201cThat\u2019s part of our identity, so we have to keep that going in order to win games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reimer had to make just eight saves to pick up the win but acknowledged it wasn\u2019t exactly a comfortable night seeing such little action.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese games are a lot harder than a 30- or a 40-shot night,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re not in a rhythm. You\u2019re not feeling it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just happening, so you\u2019ve just got to trust it and trust that your body knows what it has to do when the time comes. It\u2019s a difficult game as a goalie to play mentally, but you just trust it.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/p>\n

Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 James Reimer kept expecting the New York Rangers to put shots on net. They…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-557796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}