For a vast majority of the night, Game one against the Bruins went according to plan.
Other than two shifts in the third period where the entire group on the ice got hemmed in, had ample opportunities to get the puck out and failed to do so. The resulting two goals was enough for the Bruins to overcome a stretch of almost 25 straight minutes without a shot and steal home ice advantage from the Senators.
Flash back to the second period, that started scoreless and was dominated by Ottawa, but the problem is that they could only manage to score 1. I looked at my friend I went to the game with and said with two and a half minutes left in the middle frame that they need to get another one before the period was out, with the edge in play they had, getting one goal out of it wasn't enough.
I am not always right, but this time I was. Ottawa sat back and let the Bruins come to them, and when the chips were down they couldn't ramp it back up. Credit the Bruins for having no quit, because they forced the Senators mistakes with a strong forecheck and pressure of the type that Ottawa should have put on them but didn't do consistently enough.
I (and I certainly haven't been alone in it) have given Bobby Ryan a tough time for greatly underachieving, but you also need to give credit where it is due, and iin game 1 he was the best player on the ice for the Senators. He was physical, scored a goal with a nice individual effort.
It was certainly a disappointing finish to a game that had a lot of positives. The officiating was as expected, in that they let them play but for the most part it was pretty consistent. Tripping seemed to be the call of the night, but both teams got away with a lot of stickwork and questionable fouls that might normally have been called in the regular season.
It still wasn't as nasty as it will be as the series goes on, but Brad Marchand played the villan role to a "T", scoring the winner and then having some words to say to the Ottawa bench in the "skate by" that followed.
Ryan, Zack Smith and Erik Karlsson were Ottawa's best players from my vantage point, but Mark Stone is a key player and he still doesn't look right. Other than one hit in the defensive zone, Stone wasn't very noticeable. Part of that might be the inconsistency of lines not only game to game, but shift to shift. It's not just Guy Boucher, but for the past 5 years or so, Ottawa coaches seem to move players around more than any team I have seen and that affects cohesion in my mind. I get sometimes a guy isn't going and a shift of lines can get some momentum, but it has gotten to the point where it might be over-coaching by pretty much not having the same trios out for more than a couple of shifts in a row.
Regardless, that game, like this series, is going to be a long one and either team could come out at the end. Losing the first one at home isn't a great start, and it puts more pressure on the Senators to come out and make sure they even it up heading to Boston, because if Boston goes home up 2-0 it might be shorter than anyone thought.