Senators left winger Mike Hoffman, centre, loses track of the puck as he’s squeezed between Ryan McDonagh, left, and Mats Zuccarello of the Rangers on Thursday.Adam Hunger
The Ottawa Senators can take some comfort that they are headed back to home ice.
Leading two games to none when they arrived in New York City for the Eastern Conference semi-final, the Senators flew home late Thursday bruised in body and feelings after two consecutive crushing defeats by the New York Rangers.
Tuesday it was a 4-1 loss they vowed to bounce back from. Thursday it was again 4-1, with all bounces in the Rangers' favour.
"It was the most important game of the season for us," Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault said. And his team did what was necessary to make a brand-new series of it.
Thanks to a curiosity in the regular-season standings, the Senators were given home ice even though the Rangers had the better record. Ottawa won the first two games at the Canadian Tire Centre and will return there Saturday afternoon for Game 5. Game 6 will be back in New York and, if necessary, the Senators would have home ice for a decisive Game 7.
So far, home ice has mattered – despite all the early NHL talk of it being relatively insignificant now.
These two games at Madison Square Garden were not good for the fragile confidence of Senators fans who have never felt their franchise a certainty.
On Ottawa talk radio, the talk included such phrases as "panic button" and "slipping away" even before Thursday's tough loss.
It was a reminder of one of Scotty Bowman's great lines when he was coaching the St. Louis Blues and the local media were saying it was no disgrace to be swept by the then-invincible Montreal Canadiens.
"What burned me," Bowman said, "was that we hadn't even played the fourth game yet."
The Ottawa Senators vowed that this game they would be "relentless." They would play what is endlessly called "desperate" hockey.
The Rangers certainly anticipated this. "Any time a game is 4-1," New York defenceman Brendan Smith had said on the off day, "normally you get a kick in the butt and you respond – so we're going to expect them to bring a hell of an effort."
The game began as expected. Senators goaltender Craig Anderson, much criticized for a goal he gave away in Game 3, showed that he was fully focused less than 90 seconds into the match, when he made a marvellous save on a clear breakaway by Michael Grabner. Less than 10 minutes later, he blocked Kevin Hayes on a partial breakaway.
While Anderson seemed returned to form, his team slowly returned to the trap, faux fore-check hockey that doomed them in Game 3. Ottawa forward Mark Stone, struggling terribly this round, could not hold a puck near the Ottawa blueline, allowing Hayes to fly through the neutral zone and slip a nice pass to a breaking Nick Holden.
Holden came in hard on Anderson, dropping the puck back to his forehand and flipping the puck into the net past Anderson's blocker for a 1-0 New York lead.
Ottawa's best chance to tie matters came late in the opening period when captain Erik Karlsson found himself with the puck, with space, with time, right in the slot in front of New York goaltender Henrik Lundqvist. Karlsson put everything he had into the shot – snapping his stick as the puck skidded harmlessly onto a Rangers stick.
The Rangers went ahead 2-0 early in the second period when rookie defender Ben Harpur fired a shot from the point directly into the shin pads of the Ranger checking him, leading to another breakaway by Grabner.
Grabner held the puck until he drew Anderson to the side, then passed over to Oscar Lindberg, who had the open side of the net.
Ottawa by now had settled back into the malaise that had been Game 3. They lucked into a power play but could not even muster a shot on net. Had it not been for Anderson, it might have been worse.
He stopped Rick Nash three times alone in the second period on superb opportunities. He stopped Derek Stepan and Mika Zibanejad on clear chances.
But he could hardly hold the net forever.
As the middle period began to wind down, Tanner Glass, the Rangers' key agitator, muscled the puck free behind the Ottawa net, J.T. Miller got the puck back to Lindberg and Lindberg scored his second of the game on a lob shot Anderson should easily have caught.
Karlsson had said the Senators would have to "create a little more chaos" in the New York end, but the chaos far more prevalent in the Ottawa end.
Karlsson himself was soon lost to the effort when he appeared to injure his leg after sliding into the boards. In obvious pain on the bench, he did not return after the break.
The continued absence of Karlsson – the team's best player and once again a finalist for the Norris Trophy – would be catastrophic for the Senators.
In a desperate attempt to shake up his team, Ottawa head coach Guy Boucher sat Anderson to start the third period and put in Mike Condon, who had not played in the playoffs.
Condon was helpless as, just past the halfway mark of the final period, Chris Kreider was able to stuff a Ryan McDonagh rebound past him.
Kyle Turris finally scored for Ottawa when he was able to fire a screen wrist shot past Lundqvist.
A meaningless goal in a game that, whether a fan of the Rangers or the Senators, seemed filled with meaning.