Mac is back: Sens take series thanks to OT power play goal
Winger was late to return to regular season, but he was right on time in beating Bruins
At last call Sunday night, the Ottawa Senators ordered up another round, and this one tasted pretty sweet.
The Senators are moving on to Round 2 of the NHL playoffs for the first time since 2013 when they eliminated the Boston Bruins with a dramatic 3-2 overtime victory in Game 6 to clinch the Eastern Conference quarterfinal series 4-2.
The Senators will prepare to host the New York Rangers in a second-round in a series that could get underway as early as Thursday after winger Clarke MacArthur scored on the power play at 6:30 of OT.
David Pastrnak was off for holding at the time of the goal and a cheer went up in the dressing room when MacArthur joined his teammates after a TV interview.
“It’s just awesome to be back playing and to end the game like that,” said a thrilled MacArthur, who has missed most of the last two years with post-concussion syndrome and only returned in the final week of the regular season. “You get opportunities like that to put them away, it’s nice to put them away.
“You miss most of the last two years and you keep working on it, and it’s just great to get that opportunity and be able to put it away like that.”
Kyle Turris and Bobby Ryan did the scoring on Boston goalie Tuukka Rask in regulation, and Patrice Bergeron sent the game to OT by beating Craig Anderson in the third. Drew Stafford also chipped in for the Bruins.
This marked the fourth game to go to overtime, the first time in Senators’ history that’s happened in a single series.
“We showed a lot of character and resilience to be able to win this series,” Senators defenceman Dion Phaneuf said. “It’s a great feeling. It was an incredible series to be a part of. It just had everything.
“As a player, it was a tough series. They’ve got a lot of skill over there. They’re a smart veteran team. There’s some guys who finished everything on our guys and they made it a long series. We found a way.”
Like pretty much every game in the last 10 days, nobody has been able to hold a lead. It was Bergeron who tied it up only 1:57 into the third on a bad change by Ottawa. After Anderson gave up a big rebound, all Bergeron had to do was deposit it home to bring some life back into the crowd.
“The series is over. It was a great battle,” Anderson said.
“We were hanging on for dear life (in the third period) but we came in here, we realized next shot wins and we just had to get back to business. That’s all we had to do.”
The Senators had nobody to blame but themselves for trailing 1-0 after the first period. The power play, which has been inconsistent all season, continued to be a major issue as Ottawa was unable to make the Bruins pay after they took three careless delay-of-game penalties in the first 16 minutes.
“It was quite a fight. That’s the way it was all year against them and you’ve got to give these guys credit. It was a war of attrition. It went down to the wire,’’ Senators head coach Guy Boucher said. “I have a lot of respect for the players in that room. We had three power plays that didn’t work out and they score on theirs, so mentally it could have affected us.
“In overtime, the message was clear,’’ Boucher added. “We didn’t play all year to play on our heels, and that’s not the way we approached it all season.”