OTTAWA — Visibly shaken. This was Craig Anderson, voice barely above a murmur, struggling to collect his thoughts well enough just to complete a sentence.
“Just a perfect shot, 12 inches off the ice, low blocker, post and in,” he said of Dale Weise’s overtime winner on Sunday. “You know. It’s one of those things where you can’t play it any different. He beat me with a great shot, and you know. Sucks on me.”
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This is the other side of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The agony and heartbreak.
While Weise basked in the praise and good feelings — he jokingly told reporters that he channelled his inner Guy Lafleur — 41 steps down the hall Anderson and the Ottawa Senators had to pick up the pieces.
Three one-goal losses. A near-impossible hill to climb. The threat of being swept by the Montreal Canadiens here on Wednesday night.
Could it really be that the denouement to an unbelievable two-month stretch of regular season is a week of soul-crushing playoff losses?
It is with good reason that coaches never truly get comfortable even when things are going well. That’s a message Dave Cameron has lived by while watching his team defy gravity since mid-February and now we’re starting to see why.
A bounce here or a bounce there and they wouldn’t be facing an 0-3 deficit.
Cameron played the cards as best he could in Game 3, starting Anderson rather than Andrew Hammond and seeing him stop 47 shots. The veteran was tremendous. And then Weise corralled a rolling puck at the left faceoff dot and beat him short side.
“It was a close one,” said Anderson. “We were there, we had the lead for a majority of the game. I just thought we were gonna close it out. It’s frustrating.
“The guys battled so hard, we played so well, and to come up short is definitely frustrating.”
Beyond the result, there was so much to like about this performance from Ottawa. There was a fantastic start, a flurry early in overtime and six successful penalty kills — one of which came in overtime and another in the dying minutes of regulation.
Erik Karlsson, the unexpectedly sturdy captain, laid out Nathan Beaulieu with a punishing open-ice hit and generally controlled the play with his speed and smarts.
“He showed tonight that he can play any way you want to play,” said Cameron. “A real gutsy performance.”
This was a team that understood the situation and delivered an effort worthy of the moment. After a touching pre-game tribute to assistant coach Mark Reeds, who died of cancer earlier this week, the Canadian Tire Centre was rocking.
The Sens rewarded their enthusiasm with a physical first period and took a lead on a goal from Clarke MacArthur. It stood until just under six minutes left in regulation, when Weise set up a tense overtime by tying it 1-1.
Ottawa didn’t buckle when Mark Borowiecki accidentally cleared a skipping puck over the glass from his own zone and put them down a man late in regulation.
“I just about fainted,” he said. “It’s tough. Tough bounce. That’s the nature of hockey — it’s a game of inches, a game of centimetres, you know?”
There is a tacit acceptance of that fact for those who spend enough time around this sport. The margin between success and failure can often be measured by a bouncing piece of rubber on ice.
Everyone will be writing off the Sens now. Carey Price won’t be beaten in four straight games, they’ll say.
Here in Ottawa the players will try to set course for the moon once again.
“Nothing is lost yet,” said Karlsson.
“That one really hurts,” added Borowiecki. “But look at the precedent we’ve set: You’re never out until you’re out. It’s just silly to think otherwise.”
At least they have that.
