Senators surge past Maple Leafs, win season opener

OTTAWA -- Brady Tkachuk had a goal and two assists to help the Ottawa Senators open their season with a 5-3 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Canadian Tire Centre on Friday.

"That was an amazing feeling," Tkachuk said. "I missed those winning ways, and that's what we're going to preach here. We want to win games, we want to be a playoff team, so hopefully we can keep going, keep learning from the mistakes we made tonight."
Matt Murray made 20 saves, and Austin Watson and Derek Stepan scored for the Senators. Each was making his Ottawa debut.
"You can see why he's an elite goalie in the League," Ottawa coach D.J. Smith said of Murray, who won the Stanley Cup twice with the Pittsburgh Penguins (2016, 2017). "He doesn't panic; he just reads the play. He got scored on and just [went] back to work."
Senators forward Tim Stutzle, the No. 3 pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, had one shot and played 11:50 in his NHL debut on his 19th birthday.
John Tavares had a goal and an assist, and Frederik Andersen made 19 saves for the Maple Leafs, who won their opener against the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday.
"We knew they were going to be content to just stay on the inside and make it difficult for us," Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said. "We're trying to speed our game up offensively and challenge the net a lot more. And we just haven't done that yet."

It was the Senators' first game in 310 days. They were not among the 24 teams in the NHL Return to Play Plan after last season was paused March 12 due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus.
Zach Hyman gave Toronto a 1-0 lead when he batted a rebound out of the air at 9:59 of the first period.
Thomas Chabot tied it 1-1 for Ottawa with the two-man advantage by one-timing a cross-ice pass from Drake Batherson at 19:16.

Alex Kerfoot's wrist shot from the point through traffic put the Maple Leafs ahead 2-1 at 9:15 of the second period.
Tkachuk tipped Nikita Zaitsev's shot to tie it 2-2 at 10:28, the first of four consecutive Senators goals.
"I just sensed that we stopped playing," Keefe said. "We lost three or four shifts in a row coming off of the [2-1] goal."
Watson scored with a wrist shot 2:04 later for a 3-2 lead at 12:32.

Ottawa scored its third goal in 4:35 when Chris Tierney slapped a loose puck in the slot to make it 4-2 at 15:03.
"We just had a really poor response after we took the lead," said Tavares, the Toronto captain. "We controlled a lot of the game, obviously playing in their half of the ice, got a big goal. Just a very poor response, gave them life, and we weren't able to establish our game again."
Stepan tapped the puck into an open net for a 5-2 lead at 6:15 of the third.
"I thought we did a good job of working as five-man units," Stepan said. "What I liked is that, in the third, we didn't just sit back. We pushed the pace a little bit and played some offense."
Tavares scored on the power play with a wrist shot from the left face-off dot to cut it to 5-3 at 7:07.
The teams play here again Saturday 7 p.m. ET; ESPN+, CBC, SNO, TVAS2, NHL.TV).
"That's a great team over there, very skilled," Tkachuk said of the Maple Leafs. "I think we're all very excited for tomorrow."
NOTES: Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly was minus-4 in 23:22 of ice time. ... Defensemen Erik Gudbranson (five blocked shots), Braydon Coburn (assist), and Josh Brown (four hits), and forwards Evgenii Dadonov and Cedric Paquette (three hits) each made his Senators debut. … Chabot's goal was the 30th of his NHL career, moving him within one of Steve Duchesne for sixth in Ottawa history by a defenseman. … Batherson, Zaitsev and Josh Norris each had two assists for the Senators.