The Sens won their fourth straight game on Saturday afternoon by shutting out the New York Islanders 3-0. It was Linus Ullmark’s third shutout of the season and his third straight win. That boosted their playoff fortunes to a place where either one more point or a loss of any kind by the Detroit Red Wings would clinch a position.
“We’re on the verge, so it doesn’t really matter, we have a game tomorrow against New Jersey, and we can clinch it ourselves by going out and winning that game,” said a locked-in Linus Ullmark, fresh off the shutout.
“Awesome censored\] win tonight,” Travis Green told his team [in a video posted after the game. “We talked about this being a playoff game, that’s what is was. That was a gritty road win.”
The Red Wings fell 5-3 to the New Jersey Devils just hours later, securing a wild card berth for the Senators.
On Sunday, Green said that the team was huddled in one hotel room watching the Detroit-New Jersey game, and all of the coaching staff was huddled in another.
"You could hear the cheering from one room to another, so it was a pretty nice moment," said Green.
“It’s an exciting time, best time of year,” said Ridly Greig after the win. “Obviously two months ago, it was maybe a little ugly, but you know, our team’s confident, we always knew we were going to be in this spot, so just keep pushing.”
During their four-game win streak, the Sens have used a red-hot power play (six goals on the man advantage), a stingy penalty kill (nine out of 10 opportunities killed) as well as dominant play from Ullmark (4-0-0 record, .952 save percentage, 1.50 goals-against average) to will their way to the dance.
“We’ve been playing a lot of good hockey as of late, so we’ve just got to take it day-by-day, not look too far ahead, and obviously once we get to the playoffs, that’s another whole challenge, so we’ve just got to make sure we’re ready for it,” said Michael Amadio.
Ottawa clinched a postseason berth after trailing by 10 points on Jan. 30, marking the second time in franchise history the club has overcome a double-digit standings deficit en route to clinching a playoff spot after doing so in 2014-15 (max deficit: 14 points on Feb. 9, 2015) during the ‘Hamburglar’ run.
“I think you look back at the year, a lot of ups and downs, it’s really a long year, anything can happen down to the wire,” said Jake Sanderson.
“I think for us, just trying to stay focused… obviously you’re looking around at other scores… but we’re not veering around with any distractions, we’re just kind of focusing on our game and making sure it’s the best when the time comes.”
