Senators rally to tame Bruins
Phaneuf’s overtime goal knots series and gives Ottawa new life heading to Boston
OTTAWA — The Ottawa Senators knew they had to win and they got the job done in style.
Just when the picture looked grim, the Senators erased a two-goal third period deficit and battled back for a dramatic 4-3 overtime victory over the Boston Bruins on Saturday afternoon in front of 18,629 at the Canadian Tire Centre. The result allowed the Senators to gain a split of the opening two games of the best-ofseven Round 1 series, which now shifts to the TD Garden in Boston.
Dion Phaneuf fired the first overtime winner of his career past Boston goalie Tuukka Rask at 1:59 of the extra period, and the smiles in the Ottawa dressing room after it was over told the story.
“That’s the biggest one I’ve scored,” said Phaneuf with a smile. “It feels great to get it for our group. Every guy on our team found a way to elevate their game tonight. It took everyone, but it feels great.”
Trailing 3-1 going into the third, the Senators tied it up with two goals in a span of 2:20, first from Chris Wideman at the 5:28 mark, then from Derick Brassard to set up a wild finish in overtime. Clarke MacArthur opened the scoring for the Senators with his first goal in nearly two years after battling back from post-concussion syndrome.
Boston’s Patrice Bergeron, Tim Schaller and Drew Stafford did the scoring in regulation time against Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson, who made 26 saves for the win.
“The second period, we didn’t really come out the way we wanted,” said Senators captain Erik Karlsson, who did brilliant work to set up Brassard for the game-tying goal. “We needed a response and we definitely gave it in the third and I think that’s the way that we’re going to have to play if we’re going to beat these guys. They’re not going to give up, they’re a good team. It was definitely nice that we responded the way we did.”
Make no mistake, the second period wasn’t pretty and the Senators looked like they were coming apart at the seams.
That’s when the Bruins outshot Ottawa 14-9 and pulled out to a 3-1 lead on the strength of goals from Bergeron, Schaller and Stafford. Bergeron stretched Boston’s lead to two goals when he tipped a David Pastrnak shot by Anderson at 16:01, after a terrible gaffe by Anderson allowed the Bruins to break a 1-1 tie.
After Anderson gave it away in his own zone trying to put the puck behind his own net, Dominic Moore tried to put it home, but it landed on Schaller’s stick and all he had to do was deposit it into a wide open net as Anderson scrambled to get back.
“I just played the puck behind the net and it took a bad bounce off the back boards. The guys came hard, it’s behind us, we battled back, we got ourselves back and that goal didn’t affect us,” said Anderson.
The goal was short-handed, it looked bad, it was costly and it absolutely cannot happen in the playoffs. The TV cameras caught Karlsson on the bench giving Brassard a tongue-lashing for not doing a better job getting back.
“I don’t think it was particularly aimed towards him, it was more towards everybody,” Karlsson said. “We gave that one away and we needed to wake up here. We just scored a huge goal on the power play (by MacArthur) and to give it right back to them, that’s not acceptable.”
He’s right. The place had just gone wild after MacArthur scored his first goal since April 19, 2015, tying the game on the power play in what was an emotional moment for him, the crowd and his teammates.
Even coach Guy Boucher was touched by it.
“For me, personally, I had the goosebumps, because we know what he’s been through and we know how much the players care,” said Boucher.
Nobody enjoyed it more than MacArthur.
“It was awesome. It was just a great celebration,” MacArthur said. “You know everyone wanted me to get one, at least that’s what it felt like. The whole city has been having to listen to me the last couple of years trying to make comebacks. To get that ovation will probably be the best moment I have in hockey.” It feels even better with a win. The Senators would have faced a daunting task if they had gone back to Boston trailing 2-0. There was no panic between periods in the room and the message was simply to keep calm because there was lots of time left.
“The resilience we showed through the last portion of the year came out again today,” Boucher said. “We’ve talked about the fact that adversity builds you or destroys you and we prefer to see it as a builder. Between the second and third, there’s nothing we can do about the past, we’ve just got to go out there.
“We wanted 60 minutes of pushing the pace and we wanted our third period to look like it did there.”
And, as a result, the picture looks a whole lot better for the Senators, with Game 3 set for the TD Garden on Monday night.