Golden Knights hold off Senators, hand them 4th straight loss

OTTAWA -- Ilya Samsonov made 38 saves, and the Vegas Golden Knights hung on to defeat the Ottawa Senators 3-2 at Canadian Tire Centre on Thursday.

“He was huge,” Golden Knights forward Brett Howden said. “He made some big saves, especially towards the end there. They had a few plays where they could’ve been putting one or two of them in. Big saves from him. It was a big night.”

Samsonov slid across the crease to his left to make a pad save on David Perron’s wrist shot from low in the right face-off circle with 2:55 remaining in the third period, one of his 16 saves in the period.

“He was just outstanding today for us,” Vegas forward Ivan Barbashev said. “He made a lot of saves against a really skilled team. He obviously kept us in the game, too. They had a lot of good looks, and he was just really good for us.”

Barbashev had two assists for the Golden Knights (12-6-2), who had lost two in a row, including 3-0 at the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday.

It was Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy’s 400th NHL win.

“It feels great,” Cassidy said. “You never know where your numbers are going to end up, but I’m going to tell you: In this business, I’m just worried about No. 401 right now.”

Adam Gaudette and Drake Batherson scored, and Linus Ullmark made 29 saves for the Senators (8-10-1), who have lost four in a row (0-3-1).

“I think, for a few guys, you just need one to go and then that confidence comes back,” Batherson said. “And then some nights the goalie is going to make the saves like that, and then other nights they're all going to go in. So it's a game of inches. And like I said, I'll give him credit. He had a good game.”

Ullmark is 4-6-1 with a 3.00 goals-against average and .887 save percentage this season, his first with Ottawa since being traded from the Boston Bruins on June 24.

“It's a little bit of a step in the right direction,” Ullmark said of the Senators’ performance. “There's some things that we have to clean up, obviously, that we're going to take a look at tomorrow morning. Go through that, you know, and it's going to be a new day tomorrow. Can't think, dwell in the past, but be [ticked] off tonight, and then go to work tomorrow.”

Jack Eichel gave Vegas a 1-0 lead at 6:45 of the first period. Barbashev’s initial shot was stopped by Ullmark, but Barbashev gathered the rebound along the left side and passed into the slot for Eichel, who finished into an open net.

“I just like the fact that on a back-to-back we didn’t let that get in our heads or anything," Howden said. “I thought we came out strong, much better than we have in previous games. That was our mentality coming into tonight: being ready to go from the start.”

Howden pushed it to 2-0 at 10:51 of the second period when he took a drop pass from Barbashev on the rush and beat Ullmark with a wrist shot under his right arm that trickled through his pads.

“I thought we controlled the tempo of the game the first half,” Cassidy said. “I thought that was important for us not to have to chase the game. To me, that’s the biggest thing when you’re on a road trip and you’re playing a lot of hockey -- try not to put yourself in a position to chase the game so that you can use your whole bench and guys can feel good about their games. That’s what happened.”

Gaudette cut it to 2-1 on the power play at 7:17 of the third, one-timing a no-look, cross-crease pass from Ridly Greig.

“That was a hard-fought game, no doubt about it,” Senators coach Travis Green said. “We threw a lot at [Samsonov] in the third period. Every game, there's going to be some plays that you'd like to have back -- that's the game of hockey. We made a couple mistakes that we'd like to have back, but I did like the compete of our team, the care of our team. I thought that early in the game, we fought the puck a little bit. Pucks were uncharacteristically bouncing off our stick and I thought we turned over a couple pucks that where the game started to get away from us, and then we got it back on track. But it's tough loss.”

Pavel Dorofeyev made it 3-1 at 9:17 on a breakaway. He took a lead pass from William Karlsson and lifted the puck over Ullmark’s outstretched blocker.

Batherson cut it to 3-2 at 12:38 when he one-timed a rebound in the left circle after Samsonov made the initial save on Jake Sanderson’s wrist shot.

“Our group still has to learn,” Green said. “I could feel it when it got to 2-0 tonight that there's a little bit of, ‘Oh boy, we're in trouble now.’ We've got to learn to play from behind and not be a team that either panics or starts to take high risks; just keep playing. In the third we did that, but we still made a couple risky mistakes that we didn't need to make, and that might have cost us in the end. But it's a work in progress with our group.”

NOTES: The Golden Knights announced shortly before the game that defenseman Alex Pietrangelo would be out with an upper-body injury. He is day to day. … Defenseman Robert Hagg, recalled from Henderson of the American Hockey League, was even in 8:59 of ice time in his Vegas debut and first NHL game this season. … Cassidy is 400-212-72 with nine ties in 693 games. … Eichel has 34 points (14 goals, 20 assists) in 23 games against the Senators, his highest point total against one team. … The Golden Knights are 12-1-1 in their history against the Senators. … Vegas forward Keegan Kolesar had a game-high eight hits; Ottawa forward Brady Tkachuk had a team-high seven. … Senators defenseman Jacob Bernard-Docker played 8:32 and was minus-2 after being a healthy scratch for the previous six games.