Senators Have Two Goals Wiped Out in One Period, Then Beat the Islanders in a Shootout

Ottawa scored the first two goals of Thursday’s game and went into the intermission trailing 1-0. The Senators had one goal reversed because the puck stayed on the goal line and a second killed by an offside challenge, eight minutes apart, then watched the Islanders score with 11.2 seconds left in the period. They still won, 2-1 in a shootout, on a night when the reviews wrote the first draft of the game and the goaltenders wrote the rest.

How did the first goal disappear?

On the goal line, by inches. Warren Foegele appeared to give Ottawa the lead at 4:50 of the first period and the play was ruled a goal on the ice, but video review determined the puck glanced off Semyon Varlamov’s shoulder, hit the crossbar and slid along the goal line without fully crossing it, Reuters reports. It is the rarest kind of reversal: not a judgement about contact or intent, just geometry. The puck did everything except the one thing that counts. Ottawa’s week had already touched the review system from the other side, when Anthony Mantha’s boarding major knocked Nikolas Matinpalo out of the Senators’ lineup without a hearing following.

How did the second goal disappear?

By the other door. Stephen Halliday appeared to score at 11:54, and this time the Islanders reached for the coach’s challenge, claiming offside on the entry. Review upheld the challenge and the goal came off the board, NHL.com reports. The distinction is the story’s spine. One Ottawa goal was beaten by the puck’s own path, a question of fact settled by the goal-line camera. The other was beaten by a rule about how the play began, a question settled by the entry camera. Two goals, two mechanisms, one period. The desk saw the heavier version of this a week ago, when Montreal had three goals disallowed in a single game and still won a shootout, and the kicking-motion argument that followed Gabriel Landeskog’s disallowed goal against Dallas showed how differently each route lands with the team on the wrong end of it.

Who scored the period’s only goal that counted?

The visitors, in the period’s final seconds. Matias Maccelli stole the puck from Shane Pinto deep in the Ottawa zone and fired over Linus Ullmark’s glove with 11.2 seconds remaining, Reuters reports, extending his point streak to five games. So the period’s arithmetic ran like this: Ottawa two apparent goals, zero on the board; New York one shot that survived every camera, ahead. Varlamov, asked about the reversals afterwards, declined the topic entirely. Goals, not goals, they did not score, and it was 0-0 and we came back, he said, via NHL.com. It was a goaltender’s answer, and an accurate one.

Why does Varlamov’s night matter beyond the shootout?

Because he nearly stole a game 22 months after his last win. Varlamov made 18 saves in his second start since returning from double partial knee replacements that cost him last season, and he was seeking his first victory since November 14, 2024, Reuters reports. Islanders coach Peter DeBoer called the performance outstanding and said everyone in the room wished they could have won one for him, NHL.com reports. The comeback has been building in public, from his first start after 676 days and two knee replacements to a night where two reviews and a shootout were all that separated him from the win. Ottawa’s side of the duel had its own milestone: Ullmark made 20 saves to reach 6-0-0, tying Ray Emery’s 2005-06 club record for a season-opening winning streak, NHL.com reports.

How did Ottawa finally get its goals to stand?

By scoring one nobody could review away, then winning the skills contest. Ridly Greig tied the game at 15:43 of the second, taking a stretch pass sequence through Foegele on a 2-on-1 and one-timing the puck over Varlamov’s blocker, NHL.com reports, a small symmetry in the man whose goal-line near miss had started the evening. Both teams wasted an overtime power play, and in the shootout Pinto, the player Maccelli had robbed for the Islanders’ goal, scored the only goal before Ullmark stopped Holmstrom to finish it. Ottawa coach Travis Green called it a very complete game. It was also a useful one for the league’s October review file, alongside the maximum fine that followed Evan Rodrigues’ downgraded spear: two goals removed by two different rules, and the team that lost them both won anyway.