Right before the 2014 Olympics, Mike Babcock was asked about having the best players in the world at his disposal for Team Canada’s quest to win a gold medal in Sochi, Russia.
In his thick Canadian drawl, without hesitation, Babcock came out with this rich piece of lore:
“To win a Stanley Cup, to win an Olympic gold, you have to line up the moon and the stars. And the reason I know this is I’ve been to the Stanley Cup Finals three times, won once. But I’ve coached in Detroit three teams that could have won the Stanley Cup.”
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In his own way, Babcock found a way to admit what no coach wants to admit; he wasn’t entirely in control of his team’s destiny.
The Senators’ magic hasn’t completely disappeared
It’s been clear from the get-go of this series that the Senators were losing control of their own destiny, if it was ever really in their hands.
In Games 1 and 2, goaltender Andrew Hammond couldn’t find the magic that took him from marginal AHL player to spectacular NHL sensation. He couldn’t conjure miracles in Montreal, as the Senators fell to a 2-0 deficit.
A down-but-not-out Craig Anderson took over in Game 3. He found a way to stop 47 shots, but two got by him, including the one in overtime he labeled ‘perfect’ (it was anything but). And his teammates threw 61 checks at the Canadiens—27 of them in the first period, in which they had 12 shots on net and only managed to come out with a single goal. And they lost a game they needed to win.
The moon and the stars had not aligned through three games. They couldn’t have been further from aligning. But they must have exhibited some semblance of calibration heading into Game 4.
“This hockey club—since I’ve taken over—I’ve always just concentrated on one game at a time,” said Senators head coach Dave Cameron. “One of the biggest challenges of coaching in this league is the length of the season. If you start looking at 82 games and all that, or in this case you’re behind in the series, you just become consumed with what’s too big of a mountain to climb. It was the same when we were behind, trying to close that 14-point gap.”
The Senators didn’t fly out of the gates in Game 4 after notching one-goal leads in the previous first periods of this series. They controlled their emotions, they waited for their opportunity and–according to Cameron–they stuck to the plan that was designed for them.
Facing elimination, the Senators took the lead from their coach, who didn’t allow what he couldn’t control to overwhelm him.
Cameron wouldn’t be distracted.
“[The thought of the season ending] was there,” he said. “But it certainly didn’t occupy a whole lot of space.”
With that, the Senators have taken one foot out of the grave.
“We won one game—that was our theme, and now our theme’s going to be let’s win two,” said Cameron.
A second win (in Montreal this Friday) brings them back to Ottawa for a chance to tie the series 3-3. How will they stick to taking it one game at a time with that thought hanging in the air?
Habs were flat
The Canadiens thought they’d face a similar onslaught in the first period as they had in the first three games. They spent the last two days talking about what to expect from Ottawa, but what they expected wasn’t what they got.
The Canadiens drew the first two power plays of the game and they couldn’t even muster a shot on net.
Then, at the halfway mark of the game, Mika Zibanejad was thrown out of the faceoff circle in Montreal’s end, and Mike Hoffman touched the puck as it dropped out of the linesman’s hand on the ensuing draw. The consecutive faceoff violations were called under rule 76.6 as a bench minor.
The Canadiens managed five shots on net on that final power play, but Anderson stood tall, and the game fell into Ottawa’s hands from that point forward.
With a chance to snuff the life out of this Senators group, the Canadiens let them off the mat in the third period.
“Obviously we didn’t show our best tonight in the third, when we had a chance to close it out,” said a disappointed Max Pacioretty. “Personally, I wanted to try and wrap it right now and not give them any life.”
But scoring chances were elusive for Pacioretty and his teammates, and he admitted the shot-count (32-28 in favour of the Senators) wasn’t a proper reflection of the limited opportunities the Canadiens had in the game. Pacioretty had five shots, but none of them stood out as potential goals.
Therrien controlling what he can control—looking forward, not back
Michel Therrien’s team had the finger on the trigger, but they just couldn’t pull it.
With the game tied 0-0 going into the third period, with the best goaltender in the world on their side, Therrien’s Canadiens couldn’t match Cameron’s desperate Senators.
There was nothing fortuitous about Mike Hoffman’s winning goal. Zibanejad applied the pressure on Tom Gilbert. Cody Ceci read the play and closed off the offensive blueline where Gilbert had tried to clear the zone, and he found Hoffman, who beat Price with a screen-shot.
It was no coincidence that Hoffman was promoted to play on Ottawa’s second line. Cameron spoke after the game of recognizing Hoffman’s steady play away from the puck in Game 3 and opted to make the change in the first period of Game 4.
Hoffman’s shot was perfect. And the remaining 10:55 of the third period was as perfect as it could’ve been for the Senators, as they kept Montreal out of their zone for the majority of the dying minutes of the game.
It was all negative for Montreal, but Therrien focused on the only positive he could find after the game.
“We’re always disappointed when we lose a game, but we can’t forget that we were all saying before coming to Ottawa that we need to win one [of two],” Therrien said in French. “For sure, we were in a position to go out and win another, but you have to look at the big picture: we managed to win a game in a tough atmosphere and we’re returning home with another opportunity in the next game.”
Therrien and his team still have the Senators on the ropes. For the most part, they’ve pushed all the right buttons. But against this team of destiny, they’re going to need the moon and the stars to align to get it done in Game 5.
