to move up and down
Resilient Senators refuse to quit in Game 3 win over Penguins
The Ottawa Senators had seen their season pronounced dead before, given last rites and a sympathetic benediction, so maybe this was old hat. Maybe being 35 seconds or so away from being down 3-0 in their second-round series with the Pittsburgh Penguins and short-handed — against Pittsburgh, there is a tendency to feel short-handed at the best of times — wasn’t the impossibility that it seemed. They’ve been dead before. It wasn’t so bad.
But the Senators didn’t die the first time. This time Karlsson was called for slashing with 1:27 left, and who scores short-handed with 1:27 left? But Pittsburgh was content to kill clock, dump the puck in, not attack, and Daniel Alfredsson started out of his own zone, under no pressure, with about 35 seconds left. The 40-year-old captain dropped a pass to Sergei Gonchar and kept skating down the right side, and Gonchar gained the zone and found Michalek on the left-side boards, inside the blue line, and the whole Penguins defence took a stride towards him, for whatever reason.
And Alfredsson was still skating away and was steaming to the net alone, and Michalek found him, and Alfredsson deflected the pass up and in with hands that have done it ten thousand times before. The clock said there were 26.8 seconds left. Scotiabank Place was so loud.
And in the second overtime Ottawa got the puck deep, and defenceman Andre Benoit got a shot from a sharp angle that hit Vokoun in the chest and bounced and fell, and Greening slapped at it and popped it over Vokoun’s shoulder at 7:39 of double overtime for a 2-1 win in an improbable Game 3. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press)
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The thinnest of margins
Bruce Arthur: Towards the end of the second period, Boston’s Rich Peverley was being pushed around, and he turned at Washington goaltender Braden Holtby and started an angry two-handed slash that he stopped short of the Capitals netminder by a few inches, just enough. Holtby stood with his arms crossed, a statue. He might not even have blinked.
And Game 7 between Boston and Washington was about who would blink first, and who would follow through. It was the first playoff series in NHL history to have all seven games decided by a single goal; it was as close as a playoff series can possibly be, or has ever been. And the final goal of the series belonged to Washington, on a goal 2:25 into overtime, for a 2-1 victory. The margin, as it had been all series, was a skate blade, if that.
Photo: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
Sidney Crosby was bloodied after being struck in the face by a puck shot by New York Islanders defenceman Dylan Reese.
The Pittsburgh captain, playing in the ninth game of his second comeback of the season after recovering from concussion symptoms, was hit 1:43 into the second period. Reese was trying to clear the puck out of the lower left corner in the New York end when he hit Crosby, who was standing a few feet away from him. Photos: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images, Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Same old song
Bruce Arthur: The last time the Toronto Maple Leafs won a game in the sterile and lucrative confines of the Air Canada Centre it vaulted them to seventh in the Eastern Conference, four points behind the fourth-place Philadelphia Flyers, who were coming to Toronto a few days later. “You have to go through a hard time to realize what it takes to win,” said Leafs goaltender James Reimer that night, presuming the hard times were behind them. Well, we all make mistakes.
That was 43 days before Tuesday night’s 5-2 loss at home to the New York Islanders, which came one day after Boston dug the Leafs a new sub-basement with an 8-0 thrashing. The Leafs managed 13 shots on Monday. They managed 14 shots on Tuesday. The past two games, the lights have gone out.
Photo: Mike Cassese/Reuters
Ottawa’s Jim O’Brien wears a green jersey in honour of St. Patrick’s day as he skates in the warmup before the Senators’ against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Place on March 17, 2012 in Ottawa.
The luck of the Irish was not with O’Brien and the Senators, who lost to the visiting Leafs 3-1.
Photo: Jana Chytilova/Freestyle Photography/Getty Images
That’s one way to do it. Vancouver’s Daniel Sedin is checked into the bench during the third period of their game against the St. Louis Blues on Thursday night. Photo: REUTERS/Ben Nelms
To celebrate Presidents’ Day, mascots dressed as U.S. presidents compete in a race between periods of the New York Islanders-Ottawa Senators game at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on February 20, 2012 in Uniondale, New York. The Islanders lost 6-0, with Erik Karlsson and Jason Spezza each scoring a pair of goals. Photo: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
New Jersey Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur remembers the days when Montreal Expos catcher Gary Carter would stop by the Brodeurs’ home, dropping in on the man who many times froze the Kid’s megawatt smile.
Denis Brodeur, Martin’s dad, was for years the Expos’ photographer, snapping the ballplayers’ Florida mug shots and their exploits on the diamond in Montreal. Carter, needless to say, was in many of those photos. And young Marty often tagged along when his dad headed down to West Palm Beach for the spring-training assignment.
On Sunday night, Martin Brodeur stood in his goal crease before his team’s 3-1 victory over the Montreal Canadiens and watched the emotional scoreboard tribute to Carter, who died last Thursday of brain cancer at age 57.
Photo: Olivier Jean/Reuters
