Lalime posts 25th shutout of career

OTTAWA (AP) -- Patrick Lalime made sure that there was nothing but good news for the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday night.

Lalime earned his third straight shutout, and Radek Bonk and Martin Havlat each scored twice to lead Ottawa to a 7-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning.

A soldout Corel Centre crowd of 18,500 rose to team owner Rod Bryden's challenge to fill the seats and welcome the financially troubled Senators home from a 3-1-0 road trip.

Earlier in the day, Bryden filed an offer -- backed by an unidentified New York-based corporation -- to buy the bankrupt hockey team and its arena.

"That's great news," Lalime said. "It's nice for the fans to respond the way they did and I'm sure he's going to do all his best to keep the team here."

Zdeno Chara, Petr Schastlivy and Chris Neil also scored for Ottawa, which moved to the top of the NHL standings with 62 points, one ahead of Dallas.

"It's a great day," Neil said. "It's great to see the fan support. It's key that we keep the team in Ottawa. It's a great hockey city and it's good that they came out to support us, and we had a solid effort to show them thanks for their support coming to watch us play."

Lalime made 17 saves for his fifth shutout of the season -- the 25th of his career. He extended his shutout streak to a team-record 180 minutes.

Lalime, who broke his own record of 149 minutes, 41 seconds set last season, had shutouts in Calgary and Edmonton to close out the trip after allowing six goals before being pulled in a 6-3 loss in Vancouver on Jan. 8.

"It's not just one game that he's been great, he's been pretty good all season and I think he could deserve to play in the All-Star game," Havlat said.

Lalime stopped Vincent Lecavalier on a breakaway in the first period before making a sensational glove save on a slap shot taken by former teammate Andre Roy 5:58 into the second.

"I know Andre pretty well and he likes to shoot high, so I just stuck my glove out," Lalime said.

Tampa Bay is winless in three (0-1-1-1) and has just one win in seven games.

"I think we're pretty embarrassed about our performance tonight," Roy said. "We're not going to be in the playoffs if we show up like this night after night."

Bonk scored his ninth of the season on a power play 3:56 in. Chara made it 2-0 with his fourth at 12:15 of the second, and Schastlivy got his ninth with 13.8 seconds remaining in the period to put the Senators up by three.

Ottawa added four more goals -- two from Havlat -- by 10:22 of the third to chase Nikolai Khabibulin, recently elected as the Eastern Conference's starting goalie in the All-Star game.

"You can always think that you could have done this or you could have done that, but it didn't happen tonight," Khabibulin said. "Everything went the right way for them and nothing for us."

John Grahame, acquired from Boston on Monday, relieved and stopped the two shots he faced in the final 9:38 of his Tampa Bay debut.

Game notes
Tampa Bay, which also lost 6-3 to Ottawa on Dec. 31, is winless in its last 11 games against the Senators (0-10-1). ... Ottawa G Martin Prusek was originally scheduled to start but backed up Lalime instead after he tweaked the groin injury in morning practice. An injured groin also caused him to miss the previous five games.