OTTAWA -- Ray Emery and the Ottawa Senators are
playing their best hockey of the season.
Emery made 42 saves and the Senators scored three first-period
goals en route to a 5-3 victory over the Minnesota Wild.
Defenseman Andrej Meszaros, Chris Kelly and Chris Neil tallied
in the opening session as Ottawa won for the third time in its
last four games following a stretch of seven losses in eight
contests.
"We've slowly become a little bit better," said Ottawa center
Mike Fisher, who had two assists. "We're finally doing the
little things right and playing well as a team. When we do
that, we know we can be successful."
Emery has started all four games during the Senators' hot
streak, allowing a total of nine goals. In his latest strong
effort, Emery yielded only a power-play goal to Pascal Dupuis, a
penalty-shot tally to Brian Rolston in the final session and a
late goal to Mikko Koivu after the outcome already had been
decided.
"Each game is a new one, so I just want to play solid and help
the team get wins," Emery said. "They're feeding off my
confidence and I'm feeding off their confidence. We just have to
keep that going because you can never get too up on yourself in
this league."
Meszaros scored on a blast from the right point at 5:04 of the
first period and Kelly tallied on a semi-breakaway 68 seconds
later to give Ottawa an early cushion. Neil added a power-play
goal at 14:06 of the first period when he lifted a backhander
over the shoulder of goaltender Manny Fernandez from a sharp
angle.
Captain Daniel Alfredsson tallied midway through the middle
session to make it 4-0 and Peter Schaefer buried a power-play
goal with 1:29 left to cap the scoring for the Senators.
"We just have to create momentum out there," Schaefer said. "We
have to beat the other team to the puck and if we continue to
do that, we'll all contribute."
Fernandez made 28 saves for the Wild, who have lost six of their
last eight games after opening the season with 10 wins in 12
contests.
"They're a quick team and have players that can make big plays,"
Fernandez said. "You better be ready to play whenever you come
into anybody's rink, but they really played hard right from the
start. They caught us flat-footed, myself included. It's hard
to regroup after a period like that, but tonight the damage was
already done."
Minnesota scored with the man advantage, shorthanded and on a
penalty shot, but Rolston wasn't impressed.
"It's kind of like what happened to us a lot last year," he
said. "You can't get into a hole like 4-0. We weren't sharp
from when they dropped the puck right through the entire period.
We played well after that, but it was a case of too little,
too late."