MacArthur comes through in OT
Winger scores winner to eliminate Bruins and send Sens to next round
ABOSTON t 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 quarter-final series 4-2 at the TD Garden.
Now, the Senators will prepare to face the New York Rangers in the second-round in a playoff 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 the club 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 away like that.”
While Kyle Turris and Bobby Ryan did the scoring on Tuukka Rask in regulation, it was Patrice Bergeron, who sent it to OT, by beating Craig Anderson in the third. Drew Stafford also chipped in for the Bruins.
This was the fourth game of the series to go to OT and it’s the first time in franchise history that has happened to the Senators in a series.
“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’s some guys that finished everything on our guys and they made it a long series.”
Like pretty much every game in the past 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. Anderson gave up a big rebound and all Bergeron had to do was deposit it home to bring some life back into the Garden.
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’ 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 the club 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 that saw the club squander power-play opportunities, Ryan scored with the man advantage at 3:26 of the second. Derick Brassard fired a blast from the top of the circle that Ryan tipped home in front for his fourth of the series and that allowed the bench to breathe a sigh of relief.
“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,” Ottawa coach Guy Boucher said.
“In overtime, the 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.”