TORONTO (AP) - Ottawa coach Guy Boucher didn’t think twice about going back to Craig Anderson in goal against Toronto.
A night after being yanked in a blowout home loss to Chicago, Anderson rebounded to make 44 saves and the Senators beat the Maple Leafs 4-3 on Wednesday night in the final game for both teams before their bye weeks.
“I knew right away, for me when you look at it, he only played 30 minutes (against Chicago), it gives me the chance to play him the next day,” Boucher said. “I was very confident he would come in and have a rebound game and that’s exactly what he did.”
Anderson allowed four goals on 26 shots in the 8-2 loss to the Blackhawks.
“You have to put it behind you as quickly as possible,” Anderson said. “You have to leave that in the past and move on.”
Tom Pyatt broke a tie with 3:05 left. He took a feed from Matt Duchene on a 3-on-1 - after Toronto defenseman Morgan Rielly got caught pinching at Ottawa’s blue line - and beat Frederik Andersen high to the blocker side.
“Just some miscommunication between the forward and I,” Rielly said. “It’s my fault for going.”
Thomas Chabot, Mike Hoffman and Gabriel Dumont also scored for the Senators.
Andreas Borgman, James van Riemsdyk and Rielly scored for Toronto.
“We had lots of opportunities but we got impatient,” Toronto coach Mike Babcock said. “We had two pinches with no (forward back) that cost us two goals. In the end you have to play right. “Give Anderson credit. He was pulled last night and a proud guy came back tonight and played real well.”
Chabot opened the scoring when he attempted a cross-crease pass only for the puck to bounce in off Roman Polak’s foot idway through the first.
Hoffman got inside position on van Riemsdyk in front of the Leafs’ net and finished off a pass from Duchene with an easy tap-in to make it 2-0 just 1:52 into the second period.
Toronto couldn’t solve Anderson through 36 minutes despite having the first three power plays of the game and 28 shots against the Ottawa netminder up to that point - including eight alone from van Riemsdyk.
Finally, after killing off Ottawa’s first power-play chance of the game, Borgman got one past Anderson from the point with 1:50 to play in the second. Van Riemsdyk didn’t make a mistake with his ninth shot of the night, taking a pass from Tyler Bozak and going through his legs with the puck before beating the goalie from in close 56 seconds into the third period.
“I thought their goalie played extremely well and you’ve got to tip your cap to him for that,” van Riemsdyk said. “He made a lot of point-blank saves.”
Dumont put Ottawa back ahead 3-2 only 1:21 later, following up his initial shot off the end boards that bounced out front of the net for a second attempt. Rielly evened the score once again, beating a screened Anderson with a point shot at 12:28.
NOTES: Ottawa’s Bobby Ryan missed the game with a hand injury suffered the night before against Chicago. There is no time table for his return. He was replaced by Filip Chlapik, who was recalled from Belleville of the AHL. … Connor Carrick was in for Travis Dermott on Toronto’s blue line.
UP NEXT
Senators: Host St. Louis on Jan 18.
Maple Leafs: Host St. Louis on Tuesday night.
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