Ottawa Senators: 4 takeaways from 2-1 win over San Jose Sharks

The Ottawa Senators continued their recent run of good form, with Saturday’s overtime win in San Jose. We share four takeaways from their performance against the Sharks.

The Ottawa Senators gave their fans something to cheer about on Saturday evening, as they beat the San Jose Sharks 2-1 in overtime. The win also meant the Senators swept the season series, after defeating the Sharks 5-2 at home back in October.

The victory capped what has been an eventful first week in March for the Senators. Let’s count down our takeaways from the overtime win in San Jose:

4) Chris Tierney comes back to haunt his former team

San Jose will always hold a special place in Chris Tierney‘s heart. After all, he was selected 55th overall in the 2012 draft by the Sharks and saw four seasons of action at the NHL level for them.

In fact, Tierney was more than happy to remain in Northern California, as evidenced by signing a two-year contract extension prior to the 2018-19 season. However, he was then traded to the Senators during training camp as part of the package for Erik Karlsson. The Senators’ former superstar missed Saturday’s game due to a season-ending broken thumb sustained during February.

While Tierney understands the nature of the business, you imagine he wants to show the Sharks what they are missing every time he plays them. And he provided the perfect evidence on Saturday night, scoring the game-winner just 35 seconds into overtime.

The 25-year-old actually had an opportunity to leave his mark earlier in the game. He was in a position to give the Senators the lead on a penalty shot right at the end of the second period but lost control of the puck in front of the goal.

In the end, though, it didn’t matter, as Tierney got the final say against his former team. As reported by Josh Dubow of The Canadian Press via CBC, the Keswick, Ontario native was understandably happy with the outcome:

"“It was nice. Whenever you’re playing an old team you have a little extra juice in your legs. After that penalty shot it felt nice to get one.”"

For the 2019-20 campaign, Tierney now has 11 goals and 36 overall points. At his current rate, he will finish this season with the second-highest totals of his career in each category. He has already claimed the second-most assists of his career with 26, behind a career-high of 39 just last season.