Buffalo, N.Y. – Officially, the Ottawa Senators claimed the Prince of Wales Trophy Saturday, though Prince Charles didn’t bother to travel across the pond to present it, and Sens captain Daniel Alfredsson scrupulously followed protocol by refusing to raise it overhead. Alfredsson did give it an affectionate pat in the postgame ceremony on the HSBC Arena ice with NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, but that was it.
Unofficially, after Alfredsson’s overtime goal enabled Ottawa to beat the Buffalo Sabres 3-2, win the Eastern Conference championship series in five games and advance to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Senators won what might be called the Bankruptcy Bowl.
In a span of four days in early 2003, the Senators and Sabres both filed for bankruptcy protection. Although the Sabres’ mess had a lot to do with the legal problems of their erstwhile owner, John Rigas, the filings were a one-two punch to the league’s image – and also a snapshot of the NHL’s health at the time.
So in that sense, the very fact that these franchises survived, found new owners, stayed put and are thriving under the NHL’s post-lockout order is a victory for the league.
In the dressing room after the game, Senators general manager John Muckler was surprisingly reserved – at least outwardly.
“I think we’re the second-youngest team in the NHL,” Muckler said. “A lot of people don’t realize that. We’ve gone through a transition.”
He then rattled off the names of the players Ottawa traded or allowed to leave in the salary-cap era – Marian Hossa, traded to Atlanta for the troubled Dany Heatley; defenseman Zdeno Chara, who signed with Boston; and Martin Havlat, who went to Chicago.
“Those are all good players we had to move on because of the salary cap, and we replaced those players,” Muckler said. “Because we didn’t have those big names, some people thought this team wasn’t going to be as good as it turned out to be.”
Early in the season, that seemed a reasonable assumption. The Avalanche beat the Senators in Ottawa in October 19, during a stumbling Ottawa start that bottomed out at 7-11-1 before the turnaround.
Although the Senators couldn’t catch the Sabres in the Northeast Division and were the fourth seed in the East, there was nothing remotely flukish about their path to the Finals and the imminent series against Detroit or Anaheim. This was not one of those series where you talked about a break here, a break there and … No, the Senators were by far the best team, and as searing as the postmortems likely will be in Buffalo, that imbalance says more about the Senators than it does the Sabres.
At Ottawa, the constant has been the low-key Swede, Alfredsson, who has taken considerable heat in the Canadian capital over the years for not delivering enough in the clutch, or not providing the leadership to nudge the Senators to the next level. His line, with wunderkind Jason Spezza in the middle and Heatley on the other wing, was head and shoulders the best in the series against Buffalo, and the Sabres’ one-two center punch of Daniel Briere and Chris Drury didn’t sufficiently counter.
With their speed, with them at the peak of their game, and now with the rest before the Finals – which will begin either Saturday or on May 28, depending on the length of the Red Wings-Ducks Western Conference series – the Senators have a big-time shot at winning it all. From top to bottom, the Western Conference was considerably stronger this season, but that might not be reflected in the Finals. It also is arguable that there will be less pressure on the Senators in the Finals than there was in the matchup with the Sabres.
They finally got there.
“Oh, it never feels like you got a monkey off your back,” said Alfredsson. “You really have nothing to lose once you get into the playoffs. In Sweden, if you’re the last two teams in the Elite League, you can be relegated (to a lower division). That’s pressure. In the Stanley Cup playoffs, you’re playing to win something. You can be doomed in the media if you don’t live up to expectations, but you’re really looking at it like it’s something to win, and it feels great to be at the biggest stage this game has.”
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
