Toronto Maple Leafs forward Peter Holland (24) scores the winning goal on Ottawa Senators goaltender Andrew Hammond (30) in the overtime shootout at the Air Canada Centre. Toronto defeated Ottawa 3-2.John E. Sokolowski
These are the days when the out-of-town scoreboard can be your friend in the NHL.
Or your enemy.
Teams on the bubble, such as the Ottawa Senators, live and die not only in their own games, but in what happens elsewhere – often between teams they're chasing and others with nothing on the line.
"Yeah, we're checking," Sens winger Clarke MacArthur lamented. "Right when you get off the ice after a win, you find out the other team's won."
"It's crazy," added teammate Kyle Turris, the overtime hero on Saturday against the Capitals. "Seems like we're doing almost everything we can; we just aren't getting many breaks."
The Sens have had to be that good because they started that bad. This is a team that had only 20 wins 51 games into the season and then somehow won 20 of their next 27, with a coach fired and a 27-year-old rookie goalie nicknamed the Hamburglar catching fire in the middle of it all.
Sunday, they finally had a couple breaks elsewhere, too.
Pittsburgh, sliding badly with its blueline beaten up, lost in Philadelphia as the eliminated Flyers played spoiler. Detroit was then dumped by Washington, leaving the Wings, Pens and Bruins all frozen at 95 points and easily catchable for Ottawa.
The only thing in the way?
The Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Battle of Ontario could have been billed as the Battle of Opposites given how these teams have spun violently away from each other in the standings the past three months, with the Leafs spiralling into the draft lottery sweepstakes as their rivals have risen from the ashes.
Sunday was their chance to matter in the standings for a change, and they gamely played Ottawa to a draw into extra time before winning 3-2 in a nail-biter of a shootout.
The Leafs had dominated the first, piling up 22 shots; they were dominated the rest of the way, allowing nearly 50 against for the second night in a row.
The loss isn't fatal for the Sens given they picked up a single point, but it hurts. With three games left, Ottawa faces a must-win game against Pittsburgh on Tuesday and probably can't afford to give away more than another point the rest of the way.
The Sens have, in a lot of ways, been the feel-good story of the second half of the NHL season. This a team with payroll issues, that lost its popular captain a year earlier under trying circumstances, one that started so poorly it appeared hope was going to be in short supply as they began a youth movement in midseason.
With general manager Bryan Murray and assistant coach Mark Reeds both dealt devastating cancer diagnoses, there was reason to despair, too, but instead they rallied on the ice, first around assistant-turned-head-coach Dave Cameron, then around no-name minor league netminder Andrew Hammond, who has been nothing short of spectacular and was again versus the Leafs.
Cameron's success was he wasn't afraid to lean on his young players; they responded by showing the entire organization there's a lot more promise than many expected, even internally.
That obviously bodes well for the future, even if they fall short, but this is a team that desperately wants to put a fairy-tale ending on what's been a fairy-tale run.
They want to show it wasn't a blip, that it meant something more – and keep doing damage as the plucky underdog in the postseason.
"We're obviously making strides," MacArthur said. "The younger guys are getting the drift of things. It'd just be a shame if we couldn't get in this year. We're putting everything out there we can. I just hope it works out."
"The players make it fun for me because I know they're all in," Cameron explained. "There's no prodding. There's no threatening. It's just, 'Let's get at it.'"
Three more games to go. And they'll now need even more help from elsewhere to pull it all off.