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

After being thoroughly outplayed for the first two games, the Sens were relentless in ensuring they gave their best effort so far in the Stanley Cup final. This is the first time these playoffs were they have faced adversity: I'm not talking about being down 2-0 in a game or having to a kill on 5-on-3. This is the first time they have trailed this year in a playoff series, and if Anaheim won this game this series would have been pretty much over. Despite giving up the first goal and Anaheim regaining their one goal leads, Ottawa dug deep and gave a fantastic effort to take game 3 and keep themselves alive.

Everyone was wondering when Chris Neil would show up. He had an amazing game dishing out hits, getting under the skin of the Ducks and getting that huge game-tying goal to give the Sens a lift. Fisher was great. Vermette was great. And as my buddy Rob called me on the phone to say, Peter Schaefer played his best shift in his NHL career in the first period, which is saying something since he wanted him traded a long time ago. The pizza line had some good puck possession and played their best game of the finals. Ottawa stood up to them physically and did not let themselves get bullied.

The Sens did indeed get some breaks, particularly Alfredsson's goal that was redirected off his skate. It wasn't exactly a kicking motion, but I'm certain Alfie was positioning his skate so the puck would make contact. But hey, not my call.

The only downer to the evening was that awful hit by Chris Pronger on workhorse Dean McAmmond. Despite the idiotic rantings of Don Cherry, that was a dirty play. That elbow he delivered to Dean is very similar to the elbows I got taught when taking up Goshindo back when I was in high school. Pronger did not want to try to hit him with his shoulder, because if he tried, it would have been easy for Dean to walk around him and break in on Giguere all alone. It'll be interesting to see if a suspension is handed out, and you have to think after his one game suspension from hitting Tomas Holmstrom in the series against the Red Wings with that same elbow, the NHL will take a close look at it.

Ottawa is confident and will hopefully head back to Cali with the series all tied-up after Monday.

Other thoughts:

- I took a walk along Elgin Street about an hour before game time, and it was unreal. I've yet to visit Sens Mile during these playoffs, and the amount of people dressed up in red pouring out of the bars was off the charts. I was thinking to myself, "How can the Sens lose with all of this fan support?"

- I had to watch some of the action on NBC, as once again Bob Cole's insistence of screwing up names, forgetting names and throwing the Sens under the bus as often as possible just drove me crazy. The downside was that Pierre Maguire does colour for NBC, so I eventually turned back to CBC once Ottawa got the lead.