Sens overpowered in Edmonton

Leon Draisaitl scored a hat-trick as the Ottawa Senators were beaten 7-1 by the Edmonton Oilers Wednesday night at Rogers Place.

Evgenii Dadonov scored for the Senators (9-19-1) as Matt Murray stopped 29 shots. Darnell Nurse, Jujhar Khaira, Connor McDavid and James Neal also had goals for the Oilers (17-11-0) while Mike Smith made 21 saves.

“It’s hard to believe,” Sens head coach D.J. Smith said. “First period, we weren’t ready to go. Credit to them that they jumped all over us.”

A pair of quick back-to-back goals from the Oilers hurt the Senators in the opening frame. Edmonton opened the scoring just 3:52 in as Nurse’s shot from the point hit the stick of Austin Watson to beat Murray, who was screened by the traffic out front.

It took just 2:05 to double the lead as on a 2-on-0 breakaway, Devin Shore centered to Khaira who buried his third of the year.

Draisaitl made it 3-0 on the power play at 12:08 as he went end-to-end on a rush, beating Mike Reilly in the process, and then flipped the past high past Murray’s blocker as he buried his 12th of the campaign.

The German would then become the setup man as he found McDavid in the slot just 1:17 later as he added to his NHL points lead.

“We just didn’t play the right way,” Smith said. “We didn’t eliminate anybody, didn’t stop anyone in the D zone. We were easy to play against.”

Draisaitl got his second power play goal of the evening at 7:01 after the Sens had been penalized for too many men. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins whiffed on a shot in the slot but then shovelled the puck to Draisaitl who made no mistake for a 5-0 lead.

Neal made it 6-0 62 seconds later for his third of the season.

After Draisaitl completed his hat-trick 7:35 into the third, Dadonov got the Sens on the board as he completed a lovely tic-tac-toe play as he buried Austin Watson’s feed for his 100th career NHL goal.

With its victory tonight, Edmonton moved to 6-0 against Ottawa this season.

“It’s not acceptable,” Mike Reilly said. “It’s on every single guy. It’s not the coaches at all. It’s on us. We feel like we had moved past having games like that … and tonight wasn’t the case.”

Tonight marked the 100th game for Smith as Senators head coach.

Sens forward Colin White suffered a lower-body injury in the second period after crashing into the end boards and did not return. Ryan Dzingel was hurt in the third and he also did not return to the game.

Ottawa and Edmonton will square off again Friday to conclude their three-game series.