It is the national game, with only one Canadian team left standing in the race for a trophy so beloved it has been nominated as one of the CBC's Seven Wonders of Canada — and with one tough nation-wide question still to answer.
Can the Ottawa Senators become "Canada's Team"?
"We all cheered for Edmonton last year," says Barb Sunderland, who with husband Peter has been a season-ticket holder since the Senators began play in 1992, "So why not?"
Well, for one reason: Ottawa is mentioned as much around the country as a convenient swear word as it is the nation's capital.
Who cheers for taxes?
For another: Toronto.
Surely, no explanation required.
But the fact is that no Canadian team has won the ultimate Canadian trophy since 1993, the 100th anniversary of the first presentation of Lord Stanley's $50 bowl.
Since the astonishing goaltending of Patrick Roy gave the Montreal Canadiens their 23rd Cup that surprising spring 14 years ago, only the Vancouver Canucks (1994), Calgary Flames (2004) and Edmonton Oilers (2006) have reached the final round, all three coming up just short.
Three years ago, most of Canada — rival Edmonton excepted — embraced the Flames and turned Calgary's Red Mile into a national celebration.
Last year it was Edmonton's turn, with most Canadians not from Calgary wishing they, too, could join in the revelry along Whyte Avenue.
The notion that the equivalent could happen in Ottawa might be a bit difficult to imagine but then again, who really saw the Red Mile or Whyte Avenue coming?
Party on, Sparks Street — so long as everyone's home by dark…
Calgary poet Richard Harrison has called this game "the national ID," so who can really say what might happen to the shared Canadian brain should the Senators — once the laughing stock of professional hockey — win one more game and move on to the Stanley Cup finals against either the Detroit Red Wings or Anaheim Ducks.
Harrison, for one, thinks it could happen.
"You won't see anyone out on the Red Mile for Ottawa," says the award-winning poet, "but it will come. There's still some licking of the wounds that has to take place, but it will happen. It will just take time."
Carla St-Germain, who sits with the Sunderlands each home game in Ottawa, says it is already happening. "I work with a woman who's a life-long Leafs fan," she says, "and she came up to me today and said, 'You know, you've got a good team.' I couldn't believe it."
Mark St. Amour, sitting in the back of a pickup, is convinced the rest of the country will come onside if the Senators get that fourth victory against Buffalo and move on.
"They've got no choice," he grins. "We're the only ones left."
Some argue that there is no such thing as "Canada's Team" in any year, that it has mostly been a convenient invention of the media. Ottawa, in fact, has slightly fewer Canadians on the roster than Anaheim, though Canadians like Jason Spezza, Dany Heatley, Chris Phillips and goaltender Ray Emery are all team stars and Daniel Alfredsson, a Swedish prospect who became a Senator in 1995, now even summers in Ottawa.
It may, however, be less about the team than the Stanley Cup itself. That Canadians want it "home" was proved rather charmingly last year when two Wednesday night beer league players took the NHL to court over legal ownership of the Cup, winning their modest point that the Cup belongs more to the people to which it was given than the league that claimed full ownership.
Farther along the tailgate partiers at Scotiabank Place, a couple of Buffalo fans didn't agree that Canadians, for whatever reason, would come onside if the Senators move on, as is now expected after a 1-0 win Monday night that gave the Senators a 3-0 series lead.
"No way," says Chris McKee, 27, who drove six hours with 24-year-old Jonathan McGovern to cheer on their Sabres.
"Toronto is still much more Canada's team."
"At least it is in Buffalo," jokes McGovern.
That rarest of creatures — Toronto fans of the Senators — were just getting out of their SUV a row down from the Buffalo crowd.
Twenty-three-year old Mike Bottero says being a visible Senators fan in Toronto — and he came dressed head to toe in Senators paraphernalia — virtually amounts to inviting death threats.
But he says the Senators are his team because they are Canada's youngest team and therefore the "New Canada's Team." And both he and his travelling partner, 26-year-old Mike Tallis think it possible that, should Ottawa reach the final, even die-hard Leafs fans will jump aboard.
"It's Canada's capital," says Tallis, "why couldn't it happen?"
Well, for starters, three recent playoff defeats to the Leafs for the Senators. Senators' captain Alfredsson — likely the current leading candidate for Most Valuable Player honours in this playoff year — is loudly booed in Toronto every time he comes within sighting distance of a puck.
"People might be Leafs fans or other fans," says Bottero, "but if they go on they will become 'Canada's Team.' "
"Once October comes, though," Tallis smiles, "all bets are off."
