Heatley, Senators push Thrashers into last place

Ottawa — No NHL team had scored fewer goals than Ottawa before Wednesday night. Then the Senators played the Thrashers. Problem solved.

It took only 1:18 for former Thrasher Dany Heatley to open the scoring and less than 16 minutes for him to help create two more goals. The Senators went on to beat the beaten-down Thrashers 5-1.

The four-goal margin of defeat was the Thrashers’ biggest in more than a month, but it reflected the current state of the team. Atlanta has won only one game since Nov. 14, when it had a five-game winning streak, a .500 record and the sense this season might amount to something. Now, the Thrashers are alone in last place in the NHL and looking overmatched as often as not.

They were never really in Wednesday night’s game against a Senators team that, despite the victory, still ranks last in the Northeast Division.

“Nobody feels sorry for you on the team you’re playing against,” Thrashers center Todd White said. “They’ve had trouble themselves, and the first time they could put pressure on us and get us down, they did.”

The Thrashers (8-14-3) are off to their worst 25-game start since 2002-03, Heatley’s last full season in Atlanta. Heatley declined to compare that team with this one and said these Thrashers are “dangerous,” as they showed by scoring three goals in a franchise-record 59 seconds Tuesday night at Montreal.

Of course, the Thrashers lost that game. One night later, there might have been some carryover.

“I think that hurt more in the heart than it did in the legs,” Thrashers coach John Anderson said. “It was very hard to come back and do that, and then we were facing the same thing tonight.”

The Thrashers thought they saw an opening in the second period, when they had a power play that lasted 4:08, including 1:52 of two-man advantage. Not only did they fail to score, 36 seconds later they committed a penalty of their own, and the Senators scored.

“It hits our freaking shin pad and bounces in our net,” Anderson said. “That’s just the way things are going for us.”

Here’s the way things had been going for Ottawa: They averaged only 1.8 goals per game in November. Their first December game was very different, very quickly.

The Scotiabank Place crowd of 17,215 had barely settled in when Brendan Bell set up Heatley’s one-timer. Eric Boulton briefly halted the Senators’ momentum with his first goal since February, with an assist and a first career NHL point for Joey Crabb, and another assist to Jim Slater.

But Heatley quickly broke the tie by faking his way around Garnet Exelby, drawing the rest of the Thrashers penalty-kill unit toward him and passing to Jason Spezza, who scored. Heatley then set up Daniel Alfredsson for the third Senators goal of a 19-shot first period.

Bell and Shea Donovan added goals for Ottawa. Alex Auld stopped 22 of 23 shots but rarely was tested. Eight of Ilya Kovalchuk’s 11 shots were either wide of the net or blocked.

“I’ve had a lot of chances every game, but I can’t get behind the goalie,” Kovalchuk said. “We’re all struggling right now.”

Hard to stay positive?

“It is tough, really tough,” he said.