Jean-Pierre Allard of Smarting Senators will share his thoughts on Ottawa's hockey team at various points throughout the playoffs. Here are his thoughts after the Senators' 3-2 double-overtime loss to the Devils in Game 2 last night.
16-5! Yep. That's by how much Ottawa got outshot by New Jersey in the first period last night, not to mention being outscored 2-0 with the second goal coming at 19:59 of the period when Sergei Brylin stunned Ray Emery with a shot that he most definitely should have stopped.
Need I say more?
Chalk up another wasted opportunity for the Senators to make life easier for themselves and go up 2-0 in a series when Jamie Langenbrunner scored on a breakaway 1:55 into the second overtime and knot the best-of-7 series at 1-1. For those of you counting, that's now eight straight times that the Senators have failed to go up 2-0 in a series.
This game, which was a terrific one incidentally, would have never gone to double overtime had the good guys shown up on time. And so the great Ottawa mystery continues. The day someone, anyone, ever figures out how to impress upon that team they need to play a full 60 minutes is the day they will become a serious Cup contender.
Right now, it means squat that they outshot Jersey 39-15 after the first 20 minutes or that they sent the game into overtime at 19.33 of the third period, courtesy of Dany Heatley. They lost a game they should have won, seeing they were clearly the better team on a night where they outhit, outchanced and won more faceoffs than the Devils.
Of greater concern though, the difference in the game, other than the fateful first period, was simply that Martin Brodeur was better than Emery when he had to.
And that sure don't bode well for the immediate future, folks.
I hate to pop the question at this time, but are we about to exit prematurely from another post-season for the very same reason we did in the previous nine years, namely, weak goaltending?
For general manager John Muckler's sake, I sure hope not.
Jean-Pierre Allard is a freelance writer who has been following the Expos/Senators for MVN since 2004. In addition, he has covered the Ottawa Senators since 2004-05 on MVN and now will chronicle the 2007 Ottawa Lynx, the Philadelphia Phillies' Triple-A team.
His work has also been published in the Washington Times, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun, Toronto Sun, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Province and Ottawa City Woman Magazine. As a sports historian, he has also appeared on Global TV, CBC radio and SRC radio.
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1 comment:
The past is just that, the past. The Sens were the better team last night, and the Devils were pretty fortunate to pick up the win when you look at how Ottawa dominated most of that game. The Sens didn't fold and die after Pittsburgh stole Game 2 in Ottawa, so I don't expect them to fold now either. On the contrary, I think they will be all over the Devils in Game 3.
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