The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

The series is now tied 1-1, and judging by each team's performances, it's a good reflection of how this matchup has gone so far.

It can be argued Tampa played the better hockey for periods 1 & 2 of game 1, and the Sens rebounded and dominated period 3 to take the game.

The Senators did the exact opposite last night. They went full throttle from the opening face-off, which is exactly the intensity needed to play these games and they were rewarded with a goal scored in the first five minutes. It looked like perhaps Ottawa could take their first 2-0 lead in a series in their team history.

But, as the cliche goes, you need to play a full 60 minutes. They managed to put only 2 pucks towards Tampa's goalie John Grahame in the entire third period. And the Lightning made Ottawa pay for simple gaffes in their end zone. Anton Volchenkov was a huge liability, coughing up a puck to the stick of Vaclav Prospal that led to Tampa's first goal, while letting Martin St-Louis blow right by him when they scored the game winning goal in the final period.

That third period was tough to watch. After Peter Schaefer scored to make it 3-2, they pretty much let Tampa dictate the play and didn't look alive until the final flurry in the last minute of the game, which came too little too late. Another startling statistic is captain Daniel Alfredsson's stat of no shots for the entire game. Give the Lightning credit, they did a good job of shutting him down and making him ineffective.

Wade Redden will return to the lineup tomorrow and will be welcomed back with open arms. It was sad to read his mom wanted him to play game 1 despite Wade wanting to be by her side during her final hours. People deal with loss in different ways, and hopefully Wade will be strong enough to overcome this. Hockey is definitely not the most important thing on this planet.

Other thoughts:

Listening to Sens fans last night, you could have sworn they got swept and are out of contention. Do you think fans of the Detroit Red Wings and Calgary Flames are sweating a 1-1 tie in a best of 7? Absolutely not. Keep your pants on, I said Sens in five anyway, so they're going to win their next three in a row...If Chris Kelly can't play after leaving the game early with an injury last night, Tyler Arnason will get a crack to showing what he can do in a playoff environment. Worth a shot I suppose, but he'll probably only get about 10 minutes of ice time max. They also mentioned Antoine Vermette may start on a line with Spezza and Heatley. Vermette has more offensive upside than Kelly anyway, this is probably a move they should have done earlier...People were criticizing Dominik Hasek for being near the players' bench for game 1. Maybe he is a distraction and shouldn't be there, but to me, it at least shows he cares.