By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Peter Diana / Post-Gazette
Penguins Petr Sykora celebrates his goal in the first period against the Senators at the Mellon Arena last night.
While it is generally this column's policy to create the ridiculous rather than to perpetuate it, let's just say the Penguins really did want to play Ottawa in the first round of these Stanley Cup playoffs, and that Sunday's performance in Philadelphia was accordingly some kind of sleep-walking wish-fulfilling dream.
Well, no wonder.
Unless there has been some kind of scheduling miscommunication that has led the defending Eastern Conference champions to believe that Game 1 is tonight, we're left to assume that last night's Senatorial privilege included a night off in uniform.
Really, what was that?
For a team that had beaten the Penguins seven times in the past nine tries, four of those in last spring's severely abridged first playoff round, the Senators skated as if they could win Game 1 on little more than that very brand of empirical evidence.
Ottawa's initial gambit seemed to be the abandonment of forechecking altogether, which allowed the Penguins to expend no more effort in their own end than they had in the morning skate. For those who remember the kind of suffocating pressure the Senators brought to the initial periods last April, this episode brought instead a startling lack of urgency.
"We're a much more mature team," Sidney Crosby said by way of explanation in the aftermath of a 4-0 Penguins win. "That wasn't our team in the first game last year. We're much improved and I think we proved that tonight."
Ottawa's performance was so impotent -- the Senators failed to convert 5-on-3 power plays repeatedly -- that it was hard to determine exactly what was proven in Game 1.
The basic reality must be that not even the NHL's singularly emotional postseason can camouflage the fact that Ottawa has now lost 25 of its past 39, and, more specifically, that with Daniel Alfredsson, Mike Fisher and Chris Kelly out with injuries, the Senators are without an ultra-talented trio of forwards who accounted for 29 percent of the team's goals this winter.
Another evident inversion, hinted at by Crosby, was the Penguins' swollen playoff experience this time around. Only four Penguins reported to the Arena last night without any playoff experience, whereas 16 were all but hopelessly callow last year.
The general fallout from all of that was that the Penguins enjoyed an excess of open ice, and when Evgeni Malkin poked the biscuit off the boards around Ottawa defenseman Mike Commodore in his own end and started a breathtaking 2-on-1 the other way with Petr Sykora late in the first period, the perils of affording open ice to power skaters were clearly evident.
Malkin put a cross-ice pass right on Sykora's tape, and not even the playoff tested Chris Phillips could prevent the goal that made it 2-0 Penguins.
Crosby came within a whisker of flipping a backhander past Martin Gerber 30 seconds later, which could have triggered a flow toward the exits, as the prospect of three Ottawa goals seemed like a project measured in weeks.
"We've gotta get a split here, that's all; that's what you have to get when you're the underdog on the road," Ottawa's Jason Spezza said late last night. "By no means do I think they were a much better hockey team tonight. We can play with them 5 on 5."
Uh-huh, but what is it going to take for the Senators to put a puck past Marc-Andre Fleury, a series of 5 on 2s?
"Five on 3, that should be automatic," Spezza admitted. "But we failed to capitalize."
Gerber looked extremely jittery in a two-goal first period, but gained confidence rapidly, particularly when he stoned Marian Hossa with a brilliant glove save at midperiod, seconds after stalwart Senators defenseman Anton Volchenkov took a Malkin shot off the forehead in the slot and exited, head in towel.
"A pressure cut, quite severe," said Ottawa coach Bryan Murray. "He couldn't put his helmet back on. The puck hit him in the helmet, dented it, but he could play the next game."
If there was any tangible byproduct the Senators could interpret to mean that tomorrow night's second game will be any different from this, it was likely the play of Gerber, who was the victim of defensive breakdowns in the third period more than of his own lingering anxiety.
"I think Gerbs really settled down," said Spezza. "He keeps playing like that, he'll give us a shot to win this series."
Of course, if the rest of the Senators keep playing like this, they'll give Gerber a chance to be vacationing at the earliest possible moment.
Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.
First published on April 10, 2008 at 12:00 am
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