Thanks to Hammond, Senators keep surging
NEW YORK — With one game left to play, the Senators are where they need to be: among the top eight in the NHL’s Eastern Conference.
“We just want to get in,” left wing Clarke MacArthur said of the Senators’ push toward a playoff position. “That’s all we’re thinking of here.”
And with a 3-0 shutout of the New York Rangers, for the second time since this unprecedented Senators surge began seven weeks ago, Ottawa is in a playoff spot.
On Thursday night, the Sens moved past the idle Pittsburgh Penguins and the losing Boston Bruins (who fell 4-2 in Florida against the Florida Panthers) into a wild-card spot with 97 points. The Penguins have 96 points, and two games to play. The Senators have one game left — a Saturday matinee in Philadelphia. Pittsburgh owns the tiebreak on Ottawa, as do the Bruins, so the Senators much finish higher in points than one of their adversaries.
The Senators usually have a good time in New York, and that’s without even leaving the confines of Madison Square Garden for the pleasures of Manhattan. In their last eight trips in, Ottawa had a 7-0-1 record, but that was without the pressure of a playoff berth on the line.
This one was showtime, and the Senators didn’t disappoint, surviving a tenuous first period that included the frustration of a disallowed goal. Businesslike comes to mind as a description of this win.
“It was nothing special,” centre Kyle Turris said. “Kind of a methodical game where everyone was in position, making the right play and trying (to) not make a mistake.”
Andrew Hammond, the amazing Hamburglar, made no mistake among his 26 saves for his third NHL shutout.
In their latest of several mustwin games (“it feels like it’s been like that for 20, 25 games,” captain Erik Karlsson said), the Senators took control late in the second period on a pair of goals — but not before goaltender Hammond made a spectacular road-hockey-style save, his rear end to the shooter, Kevin Hayes, as Hayes missed the upper open net and ripped a shot right into Hammond’s sprawled torso.
“I don’t think I’ll ever give up on a puck,” the White Rock native said.
That unorthodox save had goalie coach Rick Wamsley grinning as he looked on from the press box. Hammond explained later that he actually “caught a rut” on the ice and fell on the play. Whatever works. Hammond improved his incredible record to 19-1-2, meaning the goalie who arrived from the AHL as an emergency fill-in in mid-February now has five more victories than No. 1 goaltender Craig Anderson. File that tidbit in the crowded beyond-rating file of the Senators’ spring run.
On the next sequence of plays after the Hammond save on Hayes, the Senators went up the ice and Mark Stone found MacArthur open to the left of Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist. MacArthur ripped a semi-slapper up and over Lundqvist at 17:31. Stone, a Calder Trophy candidate, has 11 points in his past eight games.
MacArthur knew not to take the Rangers lightly, despite the fact they weren’t dressing front line players Rick Nash, Mats Zuccarello and Marc Staal.
“You just never know from night to night,” MacArthur said. “We gave wins away in Toronto — those should be (Ottawa) wins. A good team can lose two or three guys and still do a good job out there.”