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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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This was probably the strangest part of last night’s Canadiens-Senators game: Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored a goal for the Senators, but got a high stick in the face and lost a tooth. Here he is trying to pick it up.
In case you’re keeping track at home — Carey Price, the Canadiens goaltender lost a tooth during Game 2 (he skated over to the bench and handed it to the trainer) and his Senators counterpart, Craig Anderson, lost a tooth in Game 1. Essentially, the team that has a player who loses a tooth, ends up winning the game. (Photo: Jana Chytilova/Freestyle Photography/Getty Images)
Here we go again:
Frazer McLaren said he was looking to create a “spark.” Something to breathe life into the Toronto Maple Leafs, who had been notoriously slow starters at home. So 26 seconds into Wednesday night’s game against the Ottawa Senators, he challenged Dave Dziurzynski to a fight off the faceoff.
What happened afterwards was a sickening example of the dangers that come with dropping the gloves in a hockey game.
After trading five or six punches, the 6-foot-4, 222-pound McLaren caught the 6-foot-3, 205-pound Dziurzynski with a right hand that caused the Ottawa forward to collapse unconscious face-first on the ice. He eventually got up, but was wobbling as two teammates helped him off the ice. (Photos: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press; Abelimages/Getty Images)
(Source: sports.nationalpost.com)
The man behind the glass: Sadly, there was no mystery, no prank. Not even a publicity stunt.
Thanks to the diligent reporting of diligent Sportsnet reporter Ian Mendes, we learned the man sitting behind the Ottawa Senators bench Monday night was not part of a scheme or a plot. He was just a man who got his company tickets for a night, and he was just a man who happened to look exactly like the head coach of the hockey team he was watching.
According to Mendes, the man’s name is Mike Watson, and he was attending his first game in two years: “They usually give the tickets to clients, but I was able to go tonight,” Watson told him. (Photo: Jean Levac/Postmedia News)
Remember all that talk about boycotting the NHL after the lockout? Yeah… That doesn’t appear to be happening so far. There were plenty of fans on hand for the start of training camp Sunday in Ottawa, St. Louis and Philadelphia. (Photos: Jeff Roberson/The Associated Press, Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press, Tom Mihalek/The Associated Press)
(Source: sports.nationalpost.com)
Legendary Ottawa figure skater Barbara Ann Scott, who won a gold medal at the 1948 Olympics along with the hearts of Canadians, died Sunday evening in San Fernandina, Fla.
In the year she won Olympic gold, Scott also won national, continental, European and world figure skating championships. She remains the only Canadian skater to win a singles gold medal at the Winter Olympics.
Senators have history with Game 7: Rarely have truer words been written: “Not that this was the Senators’ chosen path, it is their fallback option,” columnist Wayne Scanlan wrote in the Ottawa Citizen. “And they may regret, dearly, that Game 7 was even necessary.”
The Senators had a chance to complete a first-round upset of the top-seeded New York Rangers on Monday night, but allowed three goals in the second period to lose 3-2 at home. Ottawa will face New York in Game 7 on Thursday. They have never won a Game 7.
Ottawa-born Joshua Cassidy was the surprise winner Monday of the men’s wheelchair race at the Boston Marathon.
Cassidy, 27, added to the emotional victory by setting a world and course record time of time one hour, 18 minutes 25 seconds for the 42.195-kilometre distance.
A freelance illustrator, Cassidy led from the five-kilometre mark. When the former Ottawa Marathon champion reached the top of the course’s Heartbreak Hill (32 kilometres), he started to focus on breaking the records.
“Once I got to the top of Heartbreak, I knew I could win the race,” said Cassidy, who got his start in Paralympic wheelchair racing with Bob Schrader and Amanda Fader at the Ottawa Lions Track and Field Club.
Senators bring rough stuff to win over Rangers: Remember when the Ottawa Senators and New York Rangers didn’t know each other well enough to generate hatred?
That seems to have passed. So has the Rangers’ lead in a series no one is calling boring anymore.
A Chris Neil overtime winner has pumped life into the Senators and this NHL EasternConference quarter-final, tied 1-1 heading into Game 3 in Ottawa on Monday.
Photo: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Grudge match: The Ottawa Senators have extra incentive to win the playoff series against the New York Rangers: a chance to humiliate America’s top diplomat by making her wear their jersey.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a wager with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird ahead of Thursday night’s opening game in New York. If the Rangers win, Baird must wear New York blue. If the Senators prevail, Clinton must don Ottawa red.
“I’m pretty confident that you’ll look good in blue,” said Clinton, who represented New York in the U.S. Senate.
Baird said he’d give Clinton the jersey of his favorite player, centre Jason Spezza, if the Senators win. “You can wear it around the house,” he told her.
