Pittsburgh Penguins eliminate Ottawa Senators from Playoffs Race – NHL Playoffs
It has been a long time but the Pittsburgh Penguins are feeling good as they easily knocked out Ottawa Senators from the 2013 National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup Playoffs with a raging 6-2 victory in Game
5.
Ottawa captain, Daniel Alfredsson, had feared that this day would come and the Senators would be outright helpless in stopping due to their inability to control the situation.
Pittsburgh took the first two games with the home-ice advantage but even as the series went back to Ottawa, the Penguins overpowered the Senators while the home team managed to grab one win, that too in a double
overtime competition.
Brenden Morrow scored the opening goal while James Neal and Kris Letang fired off two more in the second period. Milan Michalek got one for Ottawa at 16:18 but was again downplayed by Evgeni Malkin’s fourth with
less than 30 seconds to go.
"When we put ourselves in a position like this, you want to capitalize on it, and we came out with the desperation to win and you saw that from the puck drop," said Pittsburgh forward James Neal. "We were physical,
putting the puck on net, special teams, we got a few big goals. It's a huge team effort and it feels good."
James Neal was definitely the start of the night as he scored twice more for Pittsburgh in the final 10 minutes of regulation while Kyle Turris gave Ottawa their second with less than seven minutes remaining.
"We came out and we surprised ourselves when we played with a lot of speed, got the puck behind them and get going to the net. It showed again tonight, getting it behind them, being physical and getting to loose
pucks," Neal said. "I can't say enough about how hard we played throughout the series.”
Showing their dominating performance, the Pittsburgh Penguins are certainly now a top contending team for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They will be facing either the Boston Bruins or New York Rangers in the Eastern
Conference Finals for the first time since 2009, which should be a exciting series to follow.
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