Senators confident they’re ‘going to play better’ in Game 3 of East 1st Round

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The Ottawa Senators returned home in the wee hours Tuesday morning, bowed but not broken.

They hauled themselves onto the flight home, still stinging from a 3-2 overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference First Round on Monday that put them in a 0-2 hole in the best-of-7 series.

Senators captain Brady Tkachuk struck a determined note in the cramped visitor’s dressing room at Lenovo Center before leaving. The only sounds while he spoke were the whirr of fans drying equipment and the wheels of carts rolling equipment into a waiting truck.

Occasionally, an expletive was muttered from the other room.

“The confidence level and the belief is still as high as you can possibly get,” Tkachuk said, having barely digested the sudden end delivered by a goal from Jordan Martinook at 13:53 of double overtime. “We’ve shown we can hang in there. We haven’t liked both the results but the confidence and belief I have in my teammates -- and we have in each other -- is the highest it’s ever been.”

Ottawa was shut out 2-0 in Game 1, foiled by Carolina goalie Frederik Andersen, who made a series of highlight-reel saves, including one against Tkachuk while the goalie was on the seat of his pants.

The Senators know the odds are long, but the series shifts to Ottawa for Game 3 at Canadian Tire Centre on Thursday (7:30 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TBS, FDSNSO, HBO MAX).

In the history of the best-of-7 format in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, teams that take a 2-0 lead in the series are 360-58 (.861). When the home team wins the first two games, it advances 88.2 percent of the time (270-36).

But the Senators have been overcoming long odds all season, riding a roller coaster that would have derailed most teams.

Linus Ullmark, their starting goalie, was away from the team for a little more than a month for personal reasons. Coming out of the break for the 2026 Winter Olympics in February, they had 64 points, seven behind the Boston Bruins for the second wild card in the East and needing to climb past three teams to get in the playoff picture. They also had to gain that ground with a decimated blue line, sometimes playing without any of their top three defensemen. All told, they dressed 13 defensemen this season, a severe referendum on their depth.

Yet, they went 16-5-4, their .720 points percentage fourth-best in the League from Feb. 26 until the end of the regular season.

“Obviously, it’s a long series, best-of-7,” Ottawa defenseman Jake Sanderson said. “Obviously, you can’t get down, you can’t get too negative.”

There are lots of positives for the Senators heading into Game 3. On repeated occasions, coach Travis Green said they played a “hell of a game” Monday. They attacked more relentlessly, defended while under duress and received elite goaltending.

Usually that is a recipe for success, but the playoffs are not about justice.

“Those are hard games to lose, and that's OK,” Green said. “That's part of it. When you're playing for something as prestigious as the Stanley Cup, when you lose a game like that, it hurts, and it should hurt.

“We've got a couple days to regroup not just physically, but mentally as well. After losing a game like that, I think that's going to be important. And you know, I think we played better the second game and we're going to play better again."

A little less than two minutes before Martinook’s goal, Senators forward Michael Amadio had the game on his stick. His shot was tipped by Andersen’s catching glove and caromed off the crossbar, a tantalizingly close tease in a game that saw Ottawa hit the post three times.

“We had tons of chances to score,” Tkachuk said. “(We) didn’t. That is how it goes sometimes.”

One of the reasons the Senators were still in it late was because Ullmark, who made 46 saves, was the best player on the ice, matching and exceeding Andersen in the 10-bell save race. His glove hand committed grand larceny multiple times.

“(Ullmark) was great,” Ottawa forward Drake Batherson said. “It could have easily been 3-, 4-nothing and he kept us in it. He’s been playing awesome.”

Help could be on the way on the blue line too. 

Green had no update Tuesday on defenseman Artem Zub, who was injured in Game 1 after a second-period collision with Hurricanes forward Seth Jarvis, but Zub has not been ruled out. Tyler Kleven has been out since breaking his jaw on April 2; he is skating with the team and could be a possibility in Game 3.

Finally, the Senators have been here before.

Last season, in a first-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, they lost Game 2 and Game 3 in overtime, each a 3-2 final, to fall behind 3-0 in the best-of-7 series.

But Ottawa responded with two victories and put a scare into its provincial rival before being eliminated in Game 6.

Each of those points is a positive to build upon heading into Thursday.

"We've done a good job all year of moving on from wins or losses, and this is just another one that we're going to have to move on from,” Green said. “You know, at the moment, you never feel good about much when you lose a game like that, but as the hours go by, you start to realize that you did a lot of good things.

“Could have easily won (Monday). Could have gone either way."

NHL.com independent correspondent Zoe Pierce contributed to this report