Senators say they lost the battle of desperation
The Rangers needed to win Game 3 more, and Ottawa didn’t do enough to stop them
Now it’s the Ottawa Senators’ turn to add some urgency to their play.
After watching his team produce its worst effort of the playoffs to date in Tuesday’s 4-1 loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden — which cut the Senators’ edge in their Eastern Conference semifinal to 2-1 — an unhappy Guy Boucher tried a different approach Wednesday. Ottawa’s head coach dispensed with practice, held a video session to go over the Game 3 loss one last time, and told his players to put their focus squarely on Thursday’s Game 4.
The message was simple: Be ready to go right from the drop of the puck.
“Start at the same time as them. That’s it, or else we have no chance,” Boucher said Wednesday at the club’s Manhattan hotel. “We have to have the urgency and the battle level that we normally have and we’ve got to match theirs.
“We know that they’ll be home and they’ll most probably display the exact same urgency as they did the last game. That’s where you start. Then we have a chance to at least compete with them, and that’s what we’re looking for.”
The good news for the Sens is they can’t be much worse than they were in Game 3. Every one of Ottawa’s eight playoff games before that three-goal loss had been decided by one goal, including four overtime victories in the five games they’ve been forced to do extra work.
While the Senators expected some serious pushback from a desperate foe, they weren’t prepared for the level of intensity the Rangers threw their way. But there is no time to dwell on a dismal performance.
“We’re still up 2-1 in the series,” winger Clarke MacArthur said. “They had a great game. That’s good for them. That’s great. It’s one game — we know that. The biggest thing will just be coming out with a better effort. We’ve got to be a little bit more desperate.”
Remember, the Senators came into this series playing the underdog card in front of anyone who would listen. The reality is they’ve been outplayed in two straight games by the Rangers and if they don’t have a better effort Thursday, they’ll be booking a trip back here for Game 6.
Make no mistake, the Senators are still sitting in a good spot, especially if they can find a way to get a split in New York before heading back to Ottawa for Game 5 on Saturday. The Rangers, meanwhile, are a loss away from the brink of elimination.
The Senators couldn’t manufacture desperation on Tuesday, arriving in New York with a 2-0 series lead. Perhaps the loss will serve as a wake-up call.
“You learn quick in the playoffs. I’ve been up 2-0 and I’ve been down 2-0 in a playoff series and some guys, when they’re living it, you can really see a good veteran team like the Rangers were desperate (Tuesday) night,” winger Alex Burrows said.
“You could see they were winning puck battles, they were first on pucks, they were blocking shots, they were doing all the right things to win the game and we’ve got to match that intensity (Thursday) night if we want to go home with a 3-1 lead.”
Boucher said the first period pretty much told the story.
“There was nothing different that they did. When you look at the video, they just wanted it more than us,” he said. “They were first on (the) puck and they won the battles. Our percentages of being first on (the) puck and winning battles in the first period was below 35 per cent.
“It doesn’t matter what you do and it doesn’t matter what systems you use, if we’re playing like that we can’t win any game — not even a regular-season game. That was below every single standard (they’ve set). We blocked 11 shots in the entire game and we’re always a team (around) 22 to 25 blocked shots a game. We’re at 11, so we’re not even close to our standards. We know that.”
Now it’s time to do something about it.