OTTAWA, ON – Artturi Lehkonen had a pair of goals Saturday night in the Montreal Canadiens’ 2-1 win over the Ottawa Senators to extend their win streak to five games, but everyone was talking about Andrew Hammond.
Hammond stopped 26 shots for the Canadiens in his return to the Canadian Tire Centre after playing 55 games for the Senators between 2014 and 2016. The 34-year-old is best known for his outstanding run to the playoffs in 2015 where he posted a 20-1-2 record.
Hammond was traded to Colorado in 2017 and has been playing in the American Hockey League for the most part until he was traded to Montreal (13-33-7) a couple of weeks ago. Last weekend he played his first game in the NHL in nearly four years.
Fans in Ottawa clearly haven’t forgotten about the “Hamburglar,” as he was known, and threw burgers on the ice following a video tribute.
“I have no animosity or anything like that towards them, but I think it’s natural any time you’re playing your former team, you’d like to win,” said Hammond. “Obviously, very happy that we were able to do that tonight. Just a really, I thought, grinding game by us. You’ve got to win lots of different ways. It was fun to be a part of.
“They came in waves at times, but for the most part I think we kept them to the outside and made my job very easy.”
There are only a couple of Senators left who played with Hammond and Colin White, who scored the lone goal for Ottawa (19-27-5), was one of them.
“It’s great to see him back in the NHL,” said White. “He’s doing great and played a great game.”
It was a momentous evening for White as well, as he made his season debut after suffering a dislocated shoulder in pre-season against Toronto on Oct. 4.
“I felt good, it just felt like another hockey game,” he said. “I was a bit nervous and excited going into it, no nap today, but it felt pretty good to get out there and just playing hockey.
“I just went out there and had fun today and [Connor Brown] made an unreal play and made it a little bit easier for me and it was just super exciting for me to score that.”
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The Senators found themselves short-handed before the game even started as both Thomas Chabot and Nikita Zaitsev were deemed unable to play just prior to warm-up. It was not COVID-19 related. That left Ottawa playing with just five defencemen.
“When you’ve got five ‘D’ you’ve got to play with a certain set of rules and we had some guys do it and some didn’t and we didn’t give our ‘D’ enough of a breather,” said Senators coach D.J. Smith. “Give them credit because they played hard.”
The win allowed the Canadiens to extend their winning streak to five games. Players seem to be buying into new head coach Martin St. Louis and it’s paying off.
“When you have a new coach, I think you’ll see that early on guys want to show you that they’re a team-first guy,” said St. Louis. “I feel like we’ve gotten better and better and better and we’re doing it consistently now.
“We come to work, take care of the team, play the game the right way. You’re going to be in a lot of games. You don’t know if you’re going to score all the goals or get all the saves, but at the end of the day, you’ve given yourself a really good chance to win if you’ve played that way.”
Montreal opened the scoring late in the first at 16:47 as Lehkonen was able to get the better of Victor Mete in front of the net and grab Ben Chiarot’s rebound for his eighth of the season.
After White’s power-play goal Montreal regained the lead late in the second period as Lehkonen scored his second of the game with a slapshot from the high slot at 14:21.
“We’re trying to stay on top of guys, force other teams to make mistakes,” said Lehkonen. “As of now, we’re getting a bit of swagger. Confidence is a huge thing in this league.”
Ottawa had chances in the third, but just couldn’t find a way to beat Hammond who made some key saves.
“Just give them credit,” said Smith. “Defensively, and five guys back all night, they didn’t give up odd-man rushes and the goalie made the saves when he had to.”
