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SENShobo

Senators Lose, No Longer So Loose

by SENShobo on 03/26/09 at 09:08 AM ET
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A game played on a razor’s edge, no scoring until the third, and it’s a 2-1 loss to the Canes.

A moment to pause, for brief reflection, and for Schubert to collect his thoughts, spilling out as they came after the younger Ruutu knocked them out of him.

It was perhaps Maurice that saw things the best, from the Ottawa Sun,

“This is an unusual team for us because usually when you play a team that is out of the playoffs, they’ve got one star. This is the one team that’s got a bunch of high- end guys that aren’t playing with the pressure of one mistake. If they tighten the gap (in the standings), I think the pressure comes back. We’ve all seen teams that have suffered through the death of their season. They go through a mourning period and then they come out and run and gun and away they go. The difference here is this team has a lot of talent.”

The gap was at seven points when Montreal beat Atlanta to widen it to nine. That, however, only put the Senators on an even sharper razor’s edge, and that’s where the pressure might have returned. 22 shots in the game for the Sens, and you know something’s missing. It was a long shot when the Sens could run the table with ten straight victories, but as Montreal and the last playoff spot edged away from them, the pressure may have crept back into their tighter game, and now they have access to one less game’s points.

From the Ottawa Citizen,

“We know the situation we’re in, no question,” [Fisher] said. “All along we tried not to look too far ahead. We’ve just stuck together and stuck with what we had to do to be successful, and done a good job. (Wednesday) night was unfortunate.”
....
“We’ve just got to keep going and preparing for the next game,” Alfredsson said. “We know the situation. We’ve known the situation for a long time. It doesn’t change anything for us in the way we prepare, the way we go about things.”

It may not change how the team approaches things, but fans who realized that another 9-1 run was probably the best they could hope for were at least hoping it would come against Philadelphia or New Jersey, or in the pair of games left against Boston. One loss, and much has changed.

This is what the Senators’ opportunities looked like before last night’s games, with five teams having to reach the combination of wins and Ottawa losses to keep the Senators on the outside looking in.

After the game, suddenly the picture looks far more bleak. Still, there’s opportunity for the Senators and fate to step in, and at the very least, this might be a season where the team really does find within itself the strength to continue trends from one season to the next.

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