Ottawa Senators extinguish the Calgary Flames with 4-3 shootout win

Ottawa Senators' Thomas Chabot (72) tries to keep Calgary Flames' Morgan Frost (16) from getting a chance on goaltender Linus Ullmark (35) during first period NHL hockey action in Ottawa, on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. Photo by Justin Tang /THE CANADIAN PRESS

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The Ottawa Senators put the Calgary Flames in their place on Thursday night, but it wasn’t easy.

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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the Senators found a way to win in a game they couldn’t afford to lose with a 4-3 shootout victory over the Flames in front of 16,790 at the Canadian Tire Centre.

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Drake Batherson, in his 400th career game, scored in the skills contest to secure the win.

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Jake Sanderson scored late to send it to overtime, while Lars Eller and Artem Zub also chipped in with goals. Linus Ullmark gave the club a chance to win with 27 stops as the Flames refused to go quietly into the night.

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Sanderson tied it up with 2:49 left in the game as the Flames opted not to challenge for interference by Batherson on the goal. That was Sanderson’s third of the year, and it atoned for a mistake earlier in the period that had given the Flames the lead.

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A turnover by Sanderson allowed the Flames to create an odd-man rush. That led to a give-and-go between Jonathan Huberdeau and Nazem Kadri, who fired it by Ullmark on the glove side at 8:16 of the third to give the Flames the lead.

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“I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty pissed off making that play,” he said.
“It’s a bad play, but you’ve gotta turn the page. The past is the past, and you’ve got to keep going.”

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A MONTH IN THE BOOKS

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The Senators closed out October with a  6-5-1 record.

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Trying to win six games in the month for the first time since the club went 7-5-0 to start the 2011-12 campaign, the Senators are in the playoff picture, and that’s good news after a rocky start to the year.

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Coming off a 7-3 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday, the Senators had to clean up their act and make life more difficult for the Flames.

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The Flames didn’t give them a whole lot, which meant this wasn’t the most exciting game people have witnessed.

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“That was two teams that weren’t giving up a lot,” coach Travis Green said. “They were clogging up the neutral zone. We had come back three times. It was nice, it was a nice two points.

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“It was just a choppy game. It seems like there was a lot of talking with the refs. There wasn’t a lot of flow to the game.  Both teams were checking pretty well, not a lot of great chances. That was a grinding game, a gritty game. It wasn’t the prettiest game of hockey you’re going to see.”