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How are Senators winning despite all their, ahem, challenges?
These are supposed to be the worst of times for the Ottawa Senators.
They are missing two-thirds of their top line – with Drake Batherson and Josh Norris out with injuries.
They trail most of their rivals in the standings and their schedule is brutal, packed with games that had to be re-slotted due to the pandemic.
On top of that, they play their home games in front of no more than 500 fans, an atmosphere that is decidedly more eerie than cheery.
And yet, they keep winning. Tuesday’s cliffhanger, a 4-3 win over the visiting Carolina Hurricanes, was Ottawa’s second straight, on top of Monday’s 4-1 victory over New Jersey. In their past eight games, the Senators are 5-2-1.
How are they doing it?
Puck stops here
In a number of ways. It starts with goaltending. Matt Murray has been outstanding in his latest reformation. The man has had more starts and stops than a bag skate since coming over from Pittsburgh before last season, but in the new year he has been rock-solid, confident.
— Locked On Senators (@SensCentral) February 8, 2022
It’s fair to say that the Senators were out-chanced on Monday AND Tuesday, but won in large part because of the play of Murray, and then Anton Forsberg.
“It makes you a better coach,” said Senators head coach D.J. Smith, with a smile, after Forsberg’s win.
It was the second straight night in which goaltending topped the post-game conversation.
“You’re not going anywhere in this league without it,” said Smith, to a goalie question after Murray stopped 32 of 33 Devils shots.
“Everytime we needed a save, he made it. It’s a really good feeling on the bench when you have that. Guys don’t grip it as tightly, we scored two goals in nine seconds (in the second period).
“As Murr has confidence in himself, the guys have confidence in him, and it’s just a good feeling.”
“He kind of stole that,” defenceman Nick Holden said of Murray’s performance. “And that’s something that you need throughout the year. You’re going to have games where you need your goalie to win you the game and he did that.”
Against Carolina, Forsberg had even more work, facing 45 shots and stopping 42. It was reminiscent of his spectacular win over the Hurricanes on Dec. 2, when he stopped 47 of 49 missiles in a 3-2 Sens win. Considering an elite team like the Canes have just one win in three tries versus Ottawa, and that via the shootout Jan. 27, they were probably glad to leave town.
Forsberg had some goalpost help and the Hurricanes missed a first period buzzer-beater by a fraction of a second, but hey, when you’re hot, you get breaks. And Ottawa’s goalies are hot.
“(Our goaltenders) have been our best players throughout this stretch of hockey and they keep us in games every night,” said Senators captain Brady Tkachuk, who ended a 15-game goalless drought with a pair of goals. “They make those timely saves.”
Goals by committee
When you are missing your two top scorers, you have to adjust, and you need scoring from a variety of sources. Seven players provided goals in the Monday-Tuesday victories, and two of them ended prolonged slumps: Tkachuk and Chris Tierney.
Nick Paul, Holden (who prevented two Carolina goals on Tuesday), Connor Brown, Adam Gaudette and Alex Formenton were the other goal scorers.
Gaudette and Dylan Gambrell have been nice additions through the injury issues, and big Mark Kastelic has been a force. Smith has been able to roll lines and is getting great penalty killing. Paul with Austin Watson and Brown and Formenton have been the usual PK pairs.
“The pairs take pride and work with each other, get a feel for what each other is doing,” Smith said.
Dee-fence
There has been a bend, don’t break flavour around the Senators lately, and it is by design. Smith and his coaching staff brought in a defensive system in the neutral zone that Smith said is “more aggressive but easier to play,” and figured it would be better for his recent additions to the lineup.
“It’s good for young guys,” Smith said. “We get (the puck), we’re in motion and able to create a little more action the other way.”
Smith said he swiped the system from Pete DeBoer back when Smith was coaching in the OHL with the Oshawa Generals.
Beyond system adjustments is the proverbial attention to detail. In their past eight games, the Sens have yielded just 13 goals, 1.6 per game.
It starts with reducing odd-man rushes, which were a big issue early in the season. Smith said people love to talk about system adjustments, but the turnaround has as much to do with a state of mind.
“Are you closing plays out? Are you more intense? Are you boxing out? Are you getting the puck and breaking out right away?” Smith said, rhetorically.
“I think every team in the league has very similar systems within two or three different things in the D-zone, but who does it faster and harder? And who spends less time there? The quicker you can break out, the less time you’re going to spend in your zone.”
The “play faster, harder” expression reminds us of the recurring “play harder, longer” phrase Paul MacLean wore out when he was head coach of the Senators. Coaches do love their catchphrases.
With games against Pittsburgh (at the Canadian Tire Centre) Thursday, Boston, Saturday and a trip to Washington on Sunday, Ottawa has some work left in this five-in-seven days scenario.
Not surprisingly, the players aren’t looking very far ahead.
“The focus is game to game,” Holden said. “We continue to build. We have an opportunity to win every night. We can’t take steps back. Winning in the NHL is about consistency, I think that’s the biggest thing.”
As Smith said early this week, there are worse things in life than having to play a lot of hockey in a short period of time. He might have been thinking of the trucker chaos downtown when he spoke.
Players are getting their treatments, their rest, and don’t have to practice much. It’s a scenario every kid would like.
‘A blast playing with Timmy’
“That’s what we dream about, playing the game, right?” Tkachuk said. “I think everybody is really excited just to be playing.”
With Norris out, Tkachuk has been playing alongside Tim Stützle, and the pair is starting to show some chemistry. Stützle is using his speed and creativity to make things happen – and that was particularly evident during a 4-on-4 sequence Tuesday in which Stützle bought time, drove the puck to the net and created a rebound goal for Tkachuk.
“It’s a blast playing with Timmy,” Tkachuk said, after the win over Carolina. “He has so much skill, so much speed. Playing with Josh and Drake was great, and now there is a new kind of connection playing with Timmy. We keep getting better together, just keep talking and trying to learn from one another.”
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Did Corey LaJoie help or hurt his chances for a premier ride? | Fast Thoughts with Bob Pockrass
Which trend would hold? The Denver Nuggets remaining undefeated at home in the playoffs or the underdog Miami Heat being the team that won’t die?
That was the question as the NBA Finals teed up Game 2 on Sunday in Denver, after the Nuggets won comfortably in Game 1.
There were plenty of other subplots: would the Heat figure out how to at least make something difficult for Nuggets star Nikola Jokic? Would Jimmy Butler return to ‘playoff Jimmy’ form? Would the Heat role players show up? Would Jamal Murray keep doing his convincing Steph Curry impression?
Well, Miami won 111-108 as Jokic finished with 41 points on 16-of-28 shooting but was limited to just four assists as the Heat were more judicious in their double teams and took away easy passing lanes.
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Butler didn’t exactly tear it up for most of the game, but he was a willing playmaker, helping find looks for his teammates. In the fourth quarter, he looked for his own offence more as he scored eight of his 21 points down the stretch while adding nine assists.
Meanwhile, Murray looked relatively ordinary as the Canadian’s streak of 25 points or more in the post-season ended at six games as he finished with 18 points and 10 assists. He did hit big three as part of the Nuggets’ 11-2 run late in the fourth that helped Denver turn a 12-point Miami lead to a one-possession game, but Murray missed a long three on the final possession that would have sent the game into overtime.
The Nuggets take the series to Miami for Game 3 on Wednesday after losing at home for the first time in 10 playoff starts, the series evened at 1-1.
Some takeaways.
Would Playoff Jimmy please stand up?
Butler has alternately looked like the best player in the world during these playoffs — he averaged 37.6 points a game in Miami’s five-game upset of the No. 1 seed Milwaukee Bucks in the first round — and just a guy.
A pretty good guy, but a long way from the second coming of Kobe Bryant.
Heading into Game 2, Butler – who scored just 13 points on 14 shots in the opener – was averaging just 20.7 points on 39-per-cent shooting over his previous six starts this post-season.
Not surprisingly, the Heat were just 2-4 over that stretch.
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There were no signs Butler was going to change course in the early going. On possession after possession, the Nuggets would funnel Butler to the baseline, content to take their chances with him dribbling through the paint without even looking at the rim.
Normally it’s a compliment to say a player of Butler’s calibre wasn’t forcing anything, but not in this case as the Heat likely would have been happy to their star try to put his imprint on the game. Instead, when Butler hit traffic he’d make a harmless pass to the corner, the Nuggets would rotate and not much would happen.
It wasn’t like Butler was a non-factor: he finished the first half with 11 points on 4-of-9 shooting to go along with four assists, but in my view the Heat need Butler to be creating offense for himself if they’re going to keep up with the Nuggets juggernaut.
In the third quarter with the game separated by a three-point field goal, Butler got out on a break but fumbled the ball away when chased down by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. It’s just one play but not one that Butler would have made a month ago.
But Butler began to heat up in the fourth as a three and a three-point play gave the Heat a six-point lead that they stretched to 12. The Heat hung on from there.
The great undrafted
The collection of undrafted role players the Heat have come to rely on to round out their lineup in support of Butler and Bam Adebayo came to play.
Miami jumped out to a 10-2 lead as Max Strus – 0-of-10 from three in Game 1 – hit a pair of quick triples early, taking advantage of some lax Nuggets defence.
Meanwhile, Gabe Vincent hit a pair of jumpers and showed why he’s been the right choice by Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra to supplant Kyle Lowry as a starter.
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As the Nuggets chipped into Miami’s lead and then threatened to run away with things in the second quarter, it was Vincent who kept the Heat in touch after Denver cut the lead to three by the end of the first quarter and pushed in front by double figures in the second. Vincent hit a big three that kept the Nuggets’ lead at 10 and then a steal and three-point play helped the Heat come back from down 15.
Vincent wasn’t the only Heat role player to find a way to contribute early. Lowry hit a three as did Kevin Love, who started for an ill Caleb Martin.
Strus finished the first half with 14 points and Vincent 12. But the Heat still trailed at half, 57-51.
They didn’t stop there. It was Vincent’s fourth three that gave Miami its first lead in the fourth quarter and by that time Duncan Robinson – another member of the Heat’s undrafted brigade – was making plays too, nailing threes and driving to the rim as well for 10 points in a quick burst.
A Martin triple – his first field goal of the game – with just under four minutes left gave Miami a 12-point lead. In all, 50 of Miami’s points came from undrafted players.
Rocky Mountain Monsters
Jokic and Murray are at their best when playing together and working in concert to create scoring opportunities seemingly at will. Their cat-and-mouse, two-man game is likely the best in the NBA, with Murray doing a reasonable impression of Steph Curry and Jokic playing the role of Draymond Green if the Golden State Warriors centre could shoot better than 40 per cent from three and score 30 points a game at will.
Heading into the series, ESPN.com reported that Murray and Jokic had created 24.5 points per game directly from handoffs and on-ball screens when working in tandem, more than any other duo in the past five years. But each player can lift the team alone, too.
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In the first quarter, it was Jokic turning up the offence as the rest of his teammates were slow to get into the game and it seemed like Miami might put the Nuggets in a deep hole early. He was 5-of-9 in the first quarter – Jokic took just one shot in the first quarter of Game 1 – while the rest of the Nuggets were 5-of-12 and Murray was 0-of-3.
But with Jokic on the bench in the second quarter, Murray began to heat up. In a two-minute stretch early in the second quarter, Murray hit a triple in transition, made a steal and scored a three-point play when he was fouled at the rim on his dunk and then hit an impossible fadeaway jumper over Adebayo at the end of the shot clock to put Denver up 12.
Not a lot of teams even have one player that can reliably raise their game in the post-season. Denver – in a sense – has three: Jokic and Murray together and then each of them on their own.
Murray’s playoff scoring average is 8.5 points more per game than his regular season average, the most of any player with at least 20 post-season games played, per ESPN.com. Second on that list is Jokic, who averages 7.1 points more per game in the playoffs than the regular season.
But give credit to Heat for adjusting. They stayed home on Denver’s shooters, taking away much of Jokic’s playmaking options and turning him into a scorer. By playing so much zone, a lot of Murray and Jokic’s two-man game was minimized — reflected by Murray’s reduced scoring and Jokic’s limited playmaking opportunities.
Random Jokic appreciation
There are almost no words to fully capture how good Jokic is at basketball. Whether he’s the best in the game now (I think so) or will end up one of the best of all time (he’s already on his way) is almost pointless to debate.
But what’s not an argument is how fun he is to watch figure out plays on the fly. In various sequences in the third quarter, he backed down Heat centre Adebayo – a perennial all-defence candidate – eventually winning a protracted, twisty, physical game of one-on-one with a delicate floater at the rim.
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A moment later, he surveyed the floor and calmly drained a triple and why not? He’s shooting 47 per cent from three in the playoffs.
Adebayo then said ‘not again’ and fouled Jokic on an overly aggressive close-out, sending him to the line for three points.
Then Jokic picked up a loose ball just over half, winning a race for it against Vincent, and won another twisty, turny game of one-on-one against a point guard in space, finishing with another floater.
His most prominent skill is passing, but Jokic’s real genius is he can beat you (on offence, at any rate) any way he decides he needs to. He scored in the post with fundamental jump hooks, he scored ambling up the floor going end-to-end as the world’s biggest, slowest, best point guard.
He scored 18 points in the third quarter as Denver started the fourth leading 83-75 and it was a joy to watch.
And some love for Lowry
The former Toronto Raptors star isn’t worth the $28 million the Heat are paying him this season or the $29 million his contract calls for next season, a big reason why it’s widely expected that the Heat will try to use his contract in a blockbuster trade – possibly including Tyler Herro – to add another star this off-season.
But it’s not like Lowry can’t play. He still can make plays that only someone with his combination of hustle and IQ would even think about: plowing into a crowd of Nuggets on a missed free throw to get his hands on the ball, allowing the Heat to score a much-needed three, or an expert pocket pass to Adebayo for a lay-up, or some clutch threes.
Lowry finished with nine points, added three assists and was on the floor and +11 in the fourth quarter.
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