OTTAWA – After more than 207 minutes of hockey, the Ottawa Senators still haven’t played with a lead in their second-round series against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
But boy do they have life.
Were it not for an adrenaline-boosting, short-handed goal by – who else? – Daniel Alfredsson with just 28.6 seconds remaining in regulation on Sunday night, this would be a story about the symbolic end to the Senators season.
Upon further review (and more than one overtime period), we’ve discovered some vital signs in this pesky patient.
They could be seen in Colin Greening’s double-overtime winner and a clutch 49-save performance from Craig Anderson and six successfully killed penalties. And they could be felt in the Senators dressing room following a game that ended shortly before midnight.
“You have to believe that you belong here otherwise what the hell are you doing?” defenceman Marc Methot said after Ottawa’s 2-1 victory. “I can’t stress enough that guys in this room do believe we can win. Look, we just knocked off the second seed (Montreal) in the first round.
“We’re facing a pretty talented squad right now but having this win kind of builds confidence now.”
A 2-1 series deficit looks a whole lot better than 3-0.
That was the reality Ottawa was facing when Erik Karlsson was sent off for a slashing penalty at 18:33 of the third period with his team trailing 1-0.
It really couldn’t have looked any bleaker at that moment, especially from the penalty box – which had to be the loneliest place to be in an eerily quiet Scotiabank Place.
“You have that little camera there and you know everybody’s looking at you,” Karlsson said. “Once you sit in there, there’s nothing you can do really. You’ve just got to believe that somehow you can pull it off and we did.”
Alfredsson offered him a reprieve.
Against all odds, the 40-year-old went undetected as he raced to the front of the Pittsburgh net and tipped a perfect Milan Michalek pass over Tomas Vokoun’s glove. The 51st career playoff goal brought a genuine feeling of hope to hockey fans in the nation’s capital.
“At the end of the game there’s no other guy I want with the puck on their stick,” Anderson said. “It’s Alfie, he’s clutch. He’s Mr. Clutch. He’s been doing it for years and hopefully he can continue to give us those big moments.”
Of course, the job wasn’t done yet.
There was still 33 seconds of Karlsson’s penalty to kill at the start of overtime and another two agonizing minutes after a holding call on Chris Phillips early in the second extra session. Anderson stared down 18 total shots in sudden death, including one at the end of a dangerous rush from Evgeni Malkin.
He also got some help from his post on a chance from Pascal Dupuis.
With so many ups and downs and swings of emotion, the battle became almost as much of a mental test as a physical one.
“I guess we’re professionals, that’s what we’re supposed to do,” said Anderson, playing in the second round for the first time in his NHL career. “The highs and lows in this game are huge. The teams that manage the ups and downs the best are usually the teams that play more consistent.
“That comes with experience. We’re still learning.”
Greening brought an end to a nervous evening at 7:39 of double overtime with his third goal of this series. Playing with shards of fiberglass in his left cheek – courtesy of a high stick in the second period – the native of St. John’s backhanded home a rebound off an Andre Benoit shot.
After that, it was pure elation.
“Obviously you kind of dream of that growing up playing in the garage or something – picturing you being able to score an overtime goal in the playoffs,” Greening said after receiving five external stitches and one internally to repair the gash on his face.
The 27-year-old forward had some of the larger pieces of fiberglass removed immediately after taking the high stick and played through a little discomfort before scoring the winner.
“You’ve got a lot of adrenaline going through your body but they were just small pieces (remaining),” he said.
This was a jittery, edge-of-your-seat gathering of 20,500 at Scotiabank Place for Game 3 and why not?
Mistakes against the Penguins have a tendency of ending up in your net and that leaves very little room for error.
A reminder of that came late in the second period with Pittsburgh’s easily overlooked fourth line on the ice. A trio of Ottawa giveaways soon became a 1-0 Penguins lead after Tyler Kennedy roofed a gorgeous shot off the crossbar and in.
That looked like all of the offence they would need.
When Chris Neil failed to lift a shot over Vokoun into a gaping net and Pittsburgh started locking down its defensive zone, the energy was slowly drained from the building. The jersey-clad fans had every reason to believe they were watching the second last home game of the season.
But this team has whole-heartedly embraced the “pesky” moniker – they’ve now outscored the opposition 16-1 after the second period during these playoffs – and the veteran Alfredsson had a least one hero moment left in him.
“That happens all the time in the United Hockey League,” Senators coach Paul MacLean joked of scoring a late short-handed goal to tie things up. “It shows that you’ve got to play the whole game.”
Now Ottawa has a chance to even the series when Game 4 is played in here on Wednesday night.
It will do so after becoming the first team to hold Pittsburgh to fewer than three goals in a game during these playoffs and after finally making its presence felt in this series.
There is still a large mountain to scale, but the climb is now just a little bit shorter for the Sens.
“We had to go for it,” Alfredsson said. “If we go down 3-0, that’s a big hole. We’re right back in it.”