The Hamburglar gets burnt, but Sens take a bite out of Bruins playoff lead

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The city that fun forgot has found reason to smile.

Despite the stubborn grip of the cold, dead hands of the coldest winter on record, a story that is both heartwarming and unlikely has dramatically picked up spirits in the nation's capital.

It's about a hamburger. It's about divine intervention … sort of. It stars an unprepossessing 27-year-old from White Rock, B.C., who couldn't make his junior team, wasn't drafted and wasn't even a consideration for the Ottawa Senators until a hand injury took out the starting goaltender and a concussion suffered in a collision with a teammate took out the backup.

In comes minor-leaguer Andrew Hammond, the Hamburglar, who goes on to tie a 77-year-old NHL record in his first 12 games – none of which he loses in regulation time.

"It's a great story," conceded head coach Claude Julien, whose Boston Bruins were in town to face Hammond Thursday night.

"The game can always use those kinds of stories."

After a fan threw a McDonald's hamburger – the Hamburglar is a long-ago McDonald's character that Hammond features on his goalie mask – onto the ice to celebrate Hammond's last home victory, and Hammond raised it over his head like it was the Stanley Cup, the feel-good story became the talk of the capital.

McDonald's gave the young man a lifetime of free burgers, prompting him to quip that if he'd known this was going to happen, "I'd have put a Porsche on my mask."

The local radio sports station handed out Hamburglar masks to the first 10,000 fans and they lined up by the score to take "selfies" with a life-sized cardboard cutout of the goaltending phenomenon.

Much was made of Hammond tying the 1938 record set by Bruins Hall-of-Famer Frank (Mr. Zero) Brimsek, who didn't allow more than two goals over the first 12 games of his career. While it's hard to grasp how this could have been a record Mr. Zero was ever aware of – and Hammond admitted he'd never heard of Brimsek – it was all the same something on which the city could hang a coming-of-spring celebration.

If the Senators could continue to play this well with Hammond in net, then it was mathematically possible that Ottawa might catch Boston and, unbelievably, land the final playoff spot. Only four points separated the two eastern conference rivals going into this match, with Ottawa holding a game in hand. A team that even the diehards had given up on was now playing well – and winning.

Asked what it was that Hammond had given his once-struggling team, Kyle Turris paused and said, "Confidence … energy … humour."

Thursday night began wonderfully for the masked fans, the Senators scoring 19 seconds in when Turris buried a rebound behind Boston goaltender Tuukka Rask.

But then the script took a bad turn. The Bruins scored on their first shot – 59 seconds in – when Hammond missed a long wrist shot from Boston forward Carl Soderberg.

And Boston scored again on their fourth shot when Ryan Spooner, who grew up within a slapshot of the Canadian Tire Centre, got his stick on a shot by Milan Lucic.

Suddenly there were whispers in the press box that, come morning, Andrew Hammond would be known as "Swiss Cheeseburglar."

The 19,270 fans cheered so hard his next save, a simple stop, that it was clear the city still believed. Only a week earlier, Hammond had been on the bench when, mysteriously, head coach Dave Cameron had started regular goalkeeper Craig Anderson and the Senators had lost 3-1.

Cameron then said he'd been to church on the weekend and Father Joe Muldoon of nearby Holy Spirit had insisted "You've got to start the young fellow" – and the Ottawa coach, already under tremendous pressure from the town and talk shows – had agreed.

Before the opening period was out, the Senators had come back to tie the game at 2-2 when Mark Stone managed to slide a puck out of a goalmouth scramble and Milan Michalek swept it into the open side of Rask's net.

For a game that had been billed as a goaltenders' duel, this one quickly turned into an all-but-forgotten barn-burner. Four more goals were scored in the second: Ottawa going ahead on a David Legwand shot; Boston tying it on a five-on-three power play when Spooner got his second; Ottawa coming right back to score shorthanded when the Bruins fumbled a puck in their own end and Jean-Gabriel Pageau was able to dance around Rask; and the Bruins tying it at 4-4 when Torey Krug beat Hammond stick side off a scramble.

So much for breaking Mr. Zero's strange record.

"It's not something I'm overly concerned about," Hammond had said in the morning. "If we win 5-4, 6-4, 6-5, whatever it might be, I'll be more happy with that than anything."

He would end very happy. Late in the final period, Ottawa went ahead to stay when a Bobby Ryan rebound bounced in off a Boston defender's leg. And Turris made it 6-4 with an empty-net goal.

Two points to go – and hamburgers all around.