Chartier’s feel-good moment highlights much-needed win for Senators

Ottawa Senators head coach D.J. Smith said he wanted to give Ottawa fans a “60-minute effort” against the Calgary Flames before heading off to Sweden for a pair of games. 

Sixty minutes? Um, not quite. 

The Senators were sloppy at times – 16 official giveaways to 6 for the Flames – and against a better team might have been in some first-period trouble. 

But as the game went on and the Flames missed chances while the Senators exploited goaltender Dustin Wolf making his second career NHL start, the Senators got the win they desperately needed before their Swedish trip. Ottawa improved to 4-5-0 on home ice and 6-7-0 overall. 

The 4-1 win before a sellout crowd of 18,874 assured the team of a pleasant flight to Stockholm on Sunday.

“It’s a really good win for us,” Smith said. “A 2-1 game for us at home, hadn’t won here for a bit, and then we get a couple in the third and lock it down. I thought there was some real unselfish play by our guys tonight. That just showed maturity.”

‘Hadn’t won in a bit,’ was actually a five-game losing streak at the CTC. 

And Smith was bang on about the unselfish play. The Sens stayed on the defensive side of the puck throughout the third period, holding Calgary to just two shots on goal. 

Playing defensively didn’t prevent the home team from scoring the two goals they needed to close this out. Rourke Chartier scored his first of the season off a gorgeous three-way passing play started by Drake Batherson. And Travis Hamonic slammed home a shot less than two minutes later at 5:12 of the third period. 

Chartier hadn’t scored since he was a member of the San Jose Sharks in 2018-19. Chartier was a fifth-round draft pick of the Sharks in 2014.

“Before the game, we were talking about it,” said Senators captain Brady Tkachuk. “And he (Chartier) is like, ‘I haven’t scored in five years. I’m overdue.’ So, yeah, of course it happened tonight. You see the excitement. It’s pretty awesome.”

It wasn’t just a special moment for Chartier, but a fitting one. At 27, Chartier has played just 32 NHL games, but he used three seasons of AHL experience to round out his game. Once a 48-goal scorer with the Kelowna Rockets of the WHL, Chartier had to learn to become a third/fourth-line checker to make a place for himself in the NHL. 

And it was that attention to defensive detail that won over Smith in training camp, earning Chariter a place on the roster. Saturday’s goal was a bonus, Chartier has been a very effective fourth-line centre for the Senators all season. 

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel really good,” Chartier said of his first goal as a Senator. He credited Dominik Kubalik for the cross-ice pass and the work of Batherson behind the net to start the play. 

“All I had to do was hit the open net,” Chartier said. “It felt really good. I can’t really explain it.”

Chartier hadn’t scored in so long, his coach actually thought it was his first NHL goal. Smith heard someone on the bench yell for the players to grab the puck as a souvenir and figured it was a career first. His first in Ottawa was big enough, Chartier actually said it might be more meaningful than the first NHL goal he scored with San Jose, given the long journey to get where he is today. 

From early in 2019 to 2021, the Saskatoon native was away from hockey dealing with concussion issues. 

“After not playing for two years, as much as I knew inside myself that I’d get another crack at the NHL, you never really know,” Chartier said. 

Mathieu Joseph and Batherson each scored his fourth of the season to get the scoring started for the Senators. Blake Coleman scored Calgary’s lone goal in the second period. 

The Flames were 0-for-3 on the power play while the Senators were 1-for-5. Batherson had the power play goal, whacking a puck out of mid-air past Wolf. 

Senators goaltender Joonas Korpisalo stopped 24 of 25 shots to improve his record to 4-4-0 while establishing himself as Ottawa’s go-to starter. His underlying numbers have come around as well, with a .907 save percentage and 3.11 goals-against average. 

While Korpisalo has earned the net, it would be surprising if Anton Forsberg doesn’t get one of the starts in his native Sweden this week. 

The Senators were on the practice ice Monday in Stockholm in preparation for games against the Detroit Red Wings Thursday and Minnesota Wild on Saturday.