Senators open up on offence
Ottawa scores four in first period while chasing Fleury
Some series don’t swing, they lurch. This year the NHL has become a wholly unpredictable bouillabaisse, with a regular season that was all but crumpled and tossed in the bin once the playoffs started. The final four includes the 16th-seeded Nashville Predators and their 2-1 series lead in the West after dummying Anaheim in Game 3, and in the East . . . well, the first two games of the Eastern Conference final were very different. Ottawa dominated Game 1 in a 2-1 overtime victory; Pittsburgh owned a onesided 1-0 win in Game 2.
And then the Senators actually blew out Pittsburgh in Game 3. It was like watching a fireworks factory without a safety inspector. They forechecked more, attacked more, moved their feet against the Band-Aids-and-gauze Pittsburgh defence. The puck bounced their way, and they were in the right places when it bounced. It was a wipeout, 5-1, and the Senators lead the series two games to one.
All that is truly clear through three games of the series is this: These teams have gotten this far with discernible, exploitable weaknesses, and when they are located either team can find itself playing uphill all night. Pittsburgh is injury-ravaged and has a defence corps full of replacement-level players; Ottawa can be dominated in terms of puck possession. Through three games the Senators have outplayed the Penguins twice, and deserve the lead they have.
The funny part is that after two games full of uncertainty, this one was one-sided from the start. The Senators held the puck for pretty much all of the first 48 seconds until Kyle Turris shot a puck that bounced and hit the end boards and bounced out to Mike Hoffman, whose shot from right around the goal line bounced in off Fleury’s pads. You have to earn your bounces, they say, and that qualified.
The game settled down after that for about 10 minutes, during which Pittsburgh spent a lot of time skating in Ottawa’s direction. And then a little more than midway through the period, all polite suburban Ottawa hell broke loose.
The Senators charged, and Kyle Turris circled around and threw the puck deep, and Marc Methot — the guy who is paired with Erik Karlsson, and whose job it is to stay back when Karlsson goes on his daring and stylish drives out in the countryside — strayed in from the point, and his shot bounced, in order, off defenceman Ian Cole’s stick, off Cole’s right skate, off the back of Fleury’s skate and in. 2-0.
Not two minutes later a puck was bouncing around the Penguins’ zone again, and it rattled to Clarke MacArthur who spun a perfect quick pass to Derick Brassard. 3-0.
It took another 24 seconds for Zack Smith to gain the zone, flip a puck off the end boards that bounced right to where he was blowing past Penguins defenceman Brian Dumoulin, and wrap it around and in. 4-0.
It was . . . a Sensvalanche? An Ottawavalanche? They got bounces and capitalized, but either way Fleury was completely lost at that point. He was pulled for Matt Murray, who was this team’s No. 1 goaltender all season.
From then on it was a celebration. Defenceman Dion Phaneuf roughhoused with old Leafs teammate Phil Kessel, and later planted ol’ Phil right into the boards like he was trying to turn him into a rinkside ad. The crowd chanted “Fleu-ry!” and “Kes-sel!” and “1-3-1!”
Karlsson seemed to mock Sidney Crosby’s habit of talking to his teammates, cupping his glove to his mouth and jabbering away.
The Senators scored a fifth goal at the end of the second, and they chanted “We Want Six!” Phil and Dion kept sparring and jawing. Maybe their old buddy MacArthur could have made peace, but he was busy doing other things. The Penguins never recovered. This, for Ottawa, was bliss. So now, this series has violently heaved back toward the Senators, while the Penguins have transformed back to the team that is top-heavy and injury-ravaged.
The Penguins were already without No. 1 defenceman Kris Letang — who, by the way, since 2010-11, is second in points per game among defencemen behind Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson, at 0.80 to Karlsson’s 0.87 — and defenceman Trevor Daley, who returned for Game 3.
They lost winger Patric Hornqvist after Game 1, and lost winger Bryan Rust and defenceman Justin Schultz in Game 2.
That list encompassed the team’s fifth-leading playoff scorer (Schultz), sixth (Hornqvist), and seventh (Rust) on a team where the top four were outscoring everybody else combined. Their defence is full of bottom-pair guys. Washington must still be wondering how they lost to this team, other than the fact that it was Pittsburgh.
“Yeah, we’ve had some practice at it, unfortunately, throughout the year, but I think we handle it the right way,” said Crosby before the game.
“We approach it with the same mentality, and hopefully that’s something that will help us out with the situation we’re in now.”
Except they got steamrolled and pushed and mocked, and the team with the 12th-best record in the league is two wins from facing what could be the team with the 16th-best record, and it all makes a sort of sense. Are the Penguins out of gas? Will they roar back? The Senators are back in control of this series, for however long that lasts.