Cameron: 'We’re not gonna go away'

“There is only one god, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: ‘Not today.'”

Call it the Game of Thrones strategy: For the second game in a row Friday, Ottawa simply refused to be eliminated from the Eastern Conference quarter-finals. The Senators’ latest death-defying win certainly wasn’t an easy one. They were badly outshot, out-chanced and spent most of the game chasing the Canadiens in their own zone.

And yet through some combination of sheer stubbornness, opportunism and the outstanding play of Sens goalie Craig Anderson, Ottawa not only beat the Canadiens at the Bell Centre, they routed them 5-1. Now the team that wasn’t even supposed to be in the playoffs heads back to Ottawa in hopes of once again slipping the noose.

“We were facing elimination and the pressure was on us but each game we win, to live another day, the pressure shifts,” Ottawa head coach Dave Cameron said after the game. “With this group there’s a team-first mentality, everyone has bought in. I’ve seen it for three months and with the playoffs, now the whole country is seeing it. (We’re) not gonna go away.”

Coach Michel Therrien suggested the key to winning would be for the Canadiens to pull ahead early and deflate the Sens. For the game’s first nine minutes, they skated through the neutral zone with ease, shooting off the rush, pinning Ottawa in its own end for entire shifts and muscling their way into Anderson’s crease.

One sequence saw David Desharnais and Max Pacioretty toy with Sens defenceman Eric Gryba, cycling the puck around him with a series of passes that opened a lane to the Ottawa net. Pacioretty then beat Gryba to the crease and nearly buried a pass from Desharnais. But the puck was just slightly out of reach and Anderson preserved the early tie.

Moments later, on what seemed like an innocuous zone entry, Ottawa’s Bobby Ryan took a wrist shot from the top of the Montreal faceoff circle. The puck sailed past four Canadiens and an Ottawa screen before beating Carey Price.

In that instant, the Bell Centre crowd fell silent and momentum began shifting in Ottawa’s favour. The Senators would score on another screened shot with just 4:21 left in the first.

“That’s what we have to do, we know that (Price) is one of the best, if not the best, goalie in the league … and you know it’s hard to stop the pucks you can’t see, so we have to get more traffic in front of him,” Karlsson said.

While Price couldn’t catch a break Friday, his Senators counterpart put together another stirring performance, stopping 45 shots to preserve the win. Anderson — who was meant to sit the series out after losing his starting spot to backup Andrew Hammond — has only allowed three goals on 123 shots since starting Game 3 against Montreal.

“I’m just trying to find the puck as best I can,” said Anderson, who had to watch the Senators’ incredible two-month run to the playoffs from the bench. “I’m not sure (what I’m doing well), I’m just doing everything I can to battle for the puck. Just trying to find the puck and block everything else out.”

Perhaps Anderson’s biggest save came during a Sens power play midway through the second period. Habs forward Tomas Plekanec picked up a loose puck in the Ottawa zone and found himself alone with Anderson. He deked right, pulled the puck back to his forehand but couldn’t beat the goalie on a low wrist shot.

“I’m gonna say it again, (Anderson’s) got a history of that, of being a real good goaltender, of winning crucial games in the playoffs,” said Cameron. “I don’t know why anyone would expect anything less.”

The goalie’s performance was bolstered by teammates who — while they were often beat to the net — blocked shots and fought furiously to clear rebounds from Anderson’s crease. During a third-period power play, with the Habs down 3-1 but rallying, Jean-Gabriel Pageau threw himself in front of a Subban slapshot.

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The puck hit him hard in the foot and he writhed in pain as he hobbled back to the Ottawa bench. It seemed like the ninth or tenth time Pageau took a beating from Subban’s notorious shot, but this one might have actually sidelined him from the series.

“Banged up,” Cameron said when asked about Pageau’s injury status. “Day to day.”

Said teammate Mike Hoffman: “(The shot block) took big balls and you know the bench gets a little jolt when that happened. It’s not an easy job to do, especially coming from a guy that can shoot the puck like Subban can.”

Before Friday’s game, perhaps the most important of his short tenure as an NHL head coach, Cameron was relaxed, almost eerily so. He was even cooler after Friday’s win.

“We knew they were going to come right off the hop, we weathered the storm,” he said. “They got that goal early in the third, we weathered the storm and got the result we wanted.”

ccurtis@montrealgazette.com

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