Norris' game-winner lifts Senators to OT victory

OTTAWA-- Josh Norris scored 2:34 into overtime to give the Ottawa Senators a 4-3 win against the Seattle Kraken at Canadian Tire Centre on Thursday.

"I'm not going to lie, it feels good to score one in OT and hear the crowd," Norris said. "They were great tonight. It was a lot of fun playing in front of them. I'm sure they liked the OT thriller and the chances and stuff like that."
Norris one-timed a pass from Thomas Chabot on the power play for his second goal of the game. The forward has scored five points (three goals, two assists) in his past two games.
"Our big guys were big guys and Brady [Tkachuk] and Norris came to play," Ottawa coach D.J. Smith said. "I mean, that's a great shot there at the end. When your best players are your best players you win on a lot of nights."
Tkachuk scored his 20th goal of the season for the Senators (21-31-5), who led 3-0. Anton Forsberg made 30 saves and is 6-2-1 in his past nine starts.
"Josh said after the game, 'All that matters is winning, right?'" Tkachuk said. "So, it wasn't pretty, but we're just going to learn from those little things that we kind of strayed away from."

SEA@OTT: Norris cranks one-timer for game-winner

Jared McCann and Ryan Donato scored, and Chris Driedger made 23 saves for the Kraken (17-38-5), who have lost four in a row. Seattle scored three straight goals in the third period to tie the game.
"It's important to be able to go out there and play hard for one another and fight and compete right until the very end, whether we get a [goal] or not," Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. "That's really important. To build and execute on that momentum and have that period where everybody fed off of each other is important."
McCann made it 3-1 at 9:14 of the third period with a wrist shot. Donato got it to 3-2 36 seconds later when he tipped Jamie Oleksiak's point shot, and Appleton tied it 3-3 at 13:01 when his bad-angle shot squeaked in short side.
"The first two periods are inexcusable. I think we knew that," Donato said. "The momentum was dead; we needed something. Jared had a big goal, and once we had that feeling of, 'We're back in this,' I think a lot of guys felt a lot better about the situation. I thought we put in a [heck] of an effort in the third period. Unfortunately it ended the way it did, but that's a testament to our character."
The Kraken looked to have scored the opening goal when Mason Appleton redirected a pass from Colin Blackwell at 8:17 of the first period, but the Senators challenged for offside and video review overturned the call on the ice, with the clock reset to 8:13.
Norris gave the Senators a 1-0 lead at 8:32 when he one-timed a cross-ice pass from Tkachuk.

SEA@OTT: Tkachuk sweeps home backhander

Tkachuk extended the lead to 2-0 at 5:43 of the second period. He got the puck after an Artem Zub point shot hit him in front and chipped a shot over Driedger's glove. The forward joined Alexei Yashin (1993-97) and Martin Havlat (2000-04) as the only Senators to score at least 20 goals in three of his first four seasons.
Parker Kelly made it 3-0 at 7:40 when he picked up a giveaway by Seattle defenseman Adam Larsson and scored five-hole.
"[It was] a little bit of a roller coaster," Norris said. "Not really how you want to draw it up, I guess, at the end. But it's a good learning curve for us. Try to take the positives, I guess. We played a really good game for probably 40, 45 minutes and then it started to go sideways. But it is what it is. You get yourself in that hole and you've got to dig yourself out."
NOTES: Ottawa was the final team to play Seattle for the first time in the Kraken's inaugural NHL season. ... Norris has scored 39 goals and tied Yashin for the most in his first 100 games for the Senators. ... Tkachuk's NHL career high is 22 goals he scored as a rookie in 2018-19.