Senators hammered by St. Louis Blues, lose Ridly Greig in rough night at home

The Ottawa Senators went into Tuesday night looking unbeatable.

They came crashing back to earth with a loud, ugly thud.

The Senators’ three-game winning streak came to a screeching halt with an embarrassing 7-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues in front of a sparse gathering of 14,086 at the Canadian Tire Centre.

Only Claude Giroux and Fabian Zetterlund were able to beat Blues goaltender Joel Hofer as Ottawa managed only 17 shots on goal. Backup netminder Samuel Ersson surrendered seven goals on 26 shots and wasn’t good enough.

To make matters worse, they finished the game without rugged winger Ridly Greig. He left the bench in the third and didn’t return.

The Senators’ record fell to 5-2-0, but it was unrealistic to expect they could maintain the pace they had set through the opening weeks of the season. At times, the club looked fatigued.

This was Ottawa’s third game in four nights. Coming off a 4-1 victory over the New Jersey Devils, the Senators were going to have to dig deep if they wanted to earn two more points.

The last time the Senators started 6-1-0 through their first seven games was in 2007-08, a year after the club won the Eastern Conference and advanced to the Stanley Cup final.

Trailing 3-1 after 40 minutes, the Senators never looked they’d get back in this one.

They spent most of the third spinning their wheels while the Blues calmly put this one to bed. Tuesday served as a reminder that even when you’re feeling good the NHL has a way of humbling you in a hurry.

The Senators pulled to within a goal after Tim Stutzle made a highlight-reel seam pass to Giroux, who beat Hofer on the glove side at 17:52. That should have lit a fire under the Senators.

Unfortunately, that didn’t last long. Some poor coverage in their own zone resulted in the Blues restoring their two-goal lead only 33 seconds later when winger Mason McTavish scored.

Jake Neighbours scored his sixth goal in nine career games against the Senators to give his club a two-goal lead at 13:20 of the second. He fired a shot from the top of the slot that beat Ersson high.

The Senators’ power play has struggled to find consistency. It has delivered some big goals, but the fans were so upset with the club’s inability to get set up in the St. Louis zone that they jeered.

Ersson, 26, acquired from the Philadelphia Flyers in the off-season, made his first start at home with the Senators. The club had no desire to start No. 1 Linus Ullmark in back-to-back games with travel.

This was his third appearance in the club’s net. He came into this game with a 1-1-0 record with the Senators, including a 4.50 goals-against average and a .847 save percentage.

The Senators don’t need Ersson to win every outing, but they need him to give them a chance to win. There were times he did against the Blues, but the goal by Neighbours wasn’t good.

Ersson made a huge glove stop on Jonathan Berggren with 8:36 left in the first. Ersson flashed the leather to make sure everybody in the building was aware he’d made the stop.

That was one of the only big stops he made.

The loss of Nikolas Matinpalo to an upper-body injury against the Devils meant that Belleville callup Jorian Donovan made his season debut. He was in the third pairing with rookie Hoyt Stanley.

The Senators used 13 blueliners last season, and they’re trending towards the possibility of that happening again. The club has to manage the minutes, but they know it’s all hands on deck.

Give Donovan credit, he recorded his first National Hockey League fight by going toe-to-toe with St. Louis’ Dylan Peterson, an Ottawa native, in the third period with the club down by four goals.

It felt like every mistake ended up costing Ottawa.

Trailing 1-0 in the first, the Senators outshot the Blues 9-6, but had a tough time getting opportunities. The club had two power plays and came up empty. That turned out to be costly.

The Blues opened the scoring at 14:28 with a shorthanded effort. After Stephen Halliday lost a battle along the boards, the club got caught on an odd-man rush that resulted in a breakaway.

Pius Suter beat Ersson through the five-hole on only the fifth shot he faced. The Blues came into the game with one of the best penalty kills in the league and had halted 15 of 16 attempts.

bgarrioch@postmedia.com