NEW YORK – “What did I tell you this morning?” Derick Brassard said before leaving Madison Square Garden. “I knew that was coming.”
They all did.
The Ottawa Senators were expecting the New York Rangers to come out swinging with their season essentially on the line. They just didn’t plan on getting hit squarely between the eyes.
“We tried to prepare for it and somehow we just couldn’t find a way to execute it the way that we wanted to,” captain Erik Karlsson said after Tuesday’s 4-1 loss.
“The game was lost in the first period,” added coach Guy Boucher. “They were ready, they were hungry, they were desperate and we didn’t match that at all. That’s it.”
We have a much different-looking series on our hands as a result. No one came into this second-round matchup expecting it to be over quickly, but after the Senators grabbed the first two games on home ice they could start dreaming about an easier path to the Eastern Conference final.
No more.
The Rangers found a different gear in Game 3. They sent a strong message. They swarmed the offensive zone right from the opening faceoff and held a 26-12 advantage in first-period shot attempts, not to mention a 2-0 lead.
“We just couldn’t find a way to execute (our plan) early in the game,” said Karlsson. “We didn’t have the jump that we needed and we didn’t do the small things right. We gave them a little bit too much room and they got to feel good about themselves.”
It was telling that he ended up being on the ice for three goals against at even strength – matching his total for the previous eight games of this superlative playoffs so far.
Karlsson means everything to the Senators. He’s on the ice for almost half the game and is the rare player who can both spark the transition and lead the forecheck.
When things go wrong for him they almost always go wrong for his team.
Nothing better encapsulated this sloppy performance than seeing Karlsson get tangled up with teammate Mark Stone, creating a 2-on-1 for the Rangers that allowed Rick Nash to make it 3-0. That was basically lights out.
“We both read the same thing, which is going to happen sometimes, and we took each other’s spots,” said Karlsson. “That’s one of the mistakes that we shouldn’t accept, and we don’t. We know that that’s not the way we’re supposed to play the game.”
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Still, there weren’t as many long faces afterwards as you might expect. The Senators found solace in the fact they’re still up 2-1 in the series, with the potential of forcing an elimination game at home if they can win here Thursday night.
Karlsson stood in the Zamboni tunnel for a few minutes chatting with Daniel Alfredsson, his close friend and mentor and the Senators senior advisor of hockey operations. A few other players milled around speaking with family and friends.
In his post-game press conference, Boucher indicated that he couldn’t find any positives in the performance.
“There’s nothing for us to take from this game,” he said. “The lesson is ‘Hey, we weren’t desperate enough and they were.’ It cost us the game in the first period and that’s it.
“The rest, for me, we flush all of it and we move on to next game.”
Any adjustments made on Wednesday will come in the meeting room because the coach chose to cancel a skate for his team.
There is some uncertainty about his Game 4 lineup with Bobby Ryan leaving Tuesday’s game after taking a Karlsson shot off the leg – he had a noticeable limp as he left the rink – and Zack Smith departing early as well with an undisclosed upper-body injury.
Boucher also noted that Chris Wideman was available to come in on the blue-line, and that’s a switch he might consider making after seeing Ben Harpur on the ice for the first two goals against in Game 3.
However, this performance didn’t fall on any one individual. It was a true team loss.
“It’s our own fault and we can blame ourselves for it,” said Karlsson. “I know that this team and these guys here know what we have to do to be successful and we know what we did wrong today. You know, we’re not going to hide away from it.”
They knew it was coming and couldn’t prevent it.
New York is in the second round for the fifth time in the last six years and has demonstrated before that it’s never totally out of a series. Brassard, the former Ranger, had predicted that they’d bring their best on Tuesday after getting backed into a corner.
Now the Senators have a day and a half to conjure a suitable response.
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