BRING ON THE RANGERS
Winger scores OT winner to oust Bruins and propel Sens into the second round
Clarke MacArthur , centre, is mobbed by teammates including Alex Burrows, Mike Hoffman and Jean-Gabriel Pageau after scoring in overtime in Game 6 to carry the Senators to a 3-2 first-round playoff victory over the Bruins in Boston on Sunday.
At last call Sunday night, the Ottawa Senators ordered up another round. And it tasted pretty sweet. The Senators are moving on to Round 2 of the NHL playoffs for the first time since 2013 after they eliminated the Boston Bruins with a dramatic 3-2 overtime victory in Game 6 to clinch the Eastern Conference quarter-final series 4-2 at the TD Garden.
Now, the Senators will prepare to face the New York Rangers in the second round. The series that could get underway as early as Thursday at the Canadian Tire Centre after winger Clarke MacArthur scored on the power play at 6:30 of OT to give Ottawa the win.
David Pastrnak was off for holding at the time of the goal and cheers 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 past 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 them away like that.”
Ottawa’s Kyle Turris and Bobby Ryan scored on Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask in regulation time, but it was Patrice Bergeron, who sent it to OT when he beat Craig Anderson in the third period. Drew Stafford also chipped in for the Bruins.
It was the fourth game of the series to go to OT and it’s the first time in franchise history that’s happened to the Senators.
“We showed a lot of character and resilience to be able to win this series,” alternate captain 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 are some guys who finished everything on our guys and they made it a long series. We found a way.”
Like pretty much every game over the past 10 days, neither team was able to hold a lead. It was Bergeron who tied it up only 1:57 into the third on a bad change by Ottawa. Anderson gave up a big rebound and all Bergeron had to do was deposit it home to bring some life back into the Garden crowd.
The Senators took a 2-1 lead through two periods. The Senators outshot the Bruins 20-18, but Anderson had to step up, as well. He made a big stop on a tip by Riley Nash with 4:25 to go in the period that would have tied it up.
“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.”
It was Turris’s first goal this spring that gave the Senators a much-needed lead. He beat Rask up top at 8:32 of the second to give Ottawa a 2-1 lead. Up to that point, the Senators had been making life difficult for the Bruins, but they simply weren’t able to score on Rask.
Following a trying first period that saw the club squander power play opportunities, Ryan scored with the man advantage at 3:26 of the second frame. Derick Brassard fired a blast from the top of the circle that Ryan tipped home for his fourth goal of the series, one that allowed the bench to breathe a sigh of relief.
Trailing 1-0 after the first period, the Senators had nobody to blame but themselves.
The power play, which has been inconsistent all season, continued to be a major issue. The Senators were unable to make the Bruins pay when they took three delay-of-game penalties in the first 16 minutes.
Stafford scored on the power play for the Bruins to give them the lead, but in the end the Senators made them play.
“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 the wire. I said Game 7 in overtime, it was Game 6 in overtime,” coach Guy Boucher said. “I have a lot of respect for the players in that room. We had three power plays that don’t work out and they score on theirs, so mentally, it could have affected us.
“In overtime, th e message was clear. We didn’t play all year to play on our heels, and that’s not the way we approached it all year.”
We showed a lot of character and resilience to be able to win this series. It’s a great feeling. It was an incredible series to be a part of.