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The Ottawa Senators knew they were fighting an uphill battle against the top-seeded team in the Eastern Conference.
That hill? Yeah, it just got a little bit steeper.
John Tortorella's New York Rangers doubled up the Ottawa Senators on home ice, grabbing at one point a four-goal lead and hanging on late for the impressive game one victory.
While it's hard to reduce a sixty-minute game into one singular talking point, tonight's tilt between the Ottawa Senators and New York Rangers might be a glorious exception to the rule.
Both teams struggled with tempo. Both teams had their own spurts where offensive zone pressure was sustained, forcing the opposition on their heels for minutes on end.
The biggest difference? While out-shot on the night, the New York Rangers got a ton of looks from in-tight on Craig Anderson. When you're shooting from comfortable, high-scoring areas, you're going to score goals.
Ryan Callahan - the opening goal scorer in the first period - scored from just a few feet out, beating Filip Kuba on the puck and squeezing the shot in between Anderson's blade and the post.
Marian Gaborik's unassisted goal? Brian Boyle's marker at 19:06? Brad Richards' twenty-second career playoff goal? All had a similar theme. They were strong on the puck, entered the high-scoring areas without much of a fight, and weren't shoved aside - much to the chagrin of Ottawa netminder Craig Anderson.
On the other side of that coin, the Ottawa Senators were simply kept to the perimeter for the majority of the night. New York skated with their usual intensity for all two-hundred feet, but it was their work in the defensive third - for the majority of the game, at least - that won it tonight. Henrik Lundqvist might've seen a heftier-than-usual amount of shots, but a lot of that activity was from the perimeter.
Why? Ottawa couldn't get comfortable. And yes, it's really that simple.
Amusingly enough, the Senators finally started to dial up the pressure late with the game already over. Whether Ottawa finally found their rhythm or New York eased off the gas, the Senators cycle got deeper, and deeper, and deeper, leading to two face-saving goals by Daniel Alfredsson and Erik Condra.
A sign of things to come, or just an example of a top-seeded team easing up a bit late in the game? Truthfully, I'm not sure.
What I do know is that these two teams - scoring aside - played a pretty balanced game for the majority of the night. Tempo and fluidity would bounce back-and-forth between the two teams. The difference tonight is that the home team - in front of a raucous home crowd at Madison Square Garden - finished on their chances. Ottawa did not.
It's just one game, but the Senators are going to need to play with a bit more tenacity and vigor come game two. It's not a comfortable feeling falling behind two games in a playoff series, so dialing up the pressure and making life a bit more uncomfortable for Henrik Lundqvist, et al. is a must.
Back with plenty more tomorrow.
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Ottawa Senators Blogger • 
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