[TomWilkinson]

Ray Emery won his NHL record ninth straight game to start his career, stopping 27 shots for his first shutout in the Ottawa Senators' 4-0 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday night.

He improved to 9-0 in 12 career games and moved ahead of Bob Froese, who went 8-0 to begin his career with Philadelphia in 1982-83. Emery beat Montreal for the third time this season to improve to 6-0 in six starts, three of his wins came during the previous two seasons.

“It just kind of worked out that over the course of the past three years, I played a couple of games here and there and I had a great team in front of me all the time so I reeled off nine kind of without recognizing it until the end of it," Emery said. "It's cool to say that you have an NHL record and it's something that I'll remember."
"(Emery) seemed very confident and other than that slide at the end I thought he was very sharp," Senators coach Bryan Murray said. "Maybe he doesn't play enough, I don't know, but that other guy (Dominik Hasek) keeps him out of the net."

Emery got great support on offense, as Dany Heatley extended his point streak to 22 games on Daniel Alfredsson's team-leading 20th goal. Also, Jason Spezza scored for the fifth straight game and picked up his 30th assist. Heatley is the only player in the league to record a point in each of his team's games this season, moving within one game of tying Wayne Gretzky's record for the longest point streak at the start with a new team. Gretzky had a 23-game streak to begin his stint with Los Angeles in 1988-89.