In 2018, the Senators were about to completely unravel. But in a game against the Detroit Red Wings, they pulled off one of the best penalty kills you'll ever see.
When the Ottawa Senators made it to the Eastern Final in 2017, no one could have imagined it would be their last playoff appearance for at least eight years. Their freefall the next season was astonishing and they finished that year in 30th place overall.
But even poor seasons have their highlights. And while penalty kills rarely ever make anyone's highlight reel, this one did.
On January 3rd, 2018, in a game in Detroit, the Senators pulled off what was probably their greatest penalty kill of all time. As an added bonus, it enraged an entire arena filled with rival Red Wing fans in the process.
The Senators were trailing the Wings 1-0 and took a too-many-men penalty, something they seemed to do quite often in those days. 15 seconds into the kill, Sens forward Tom Pyatt went end to end with the puck before being tripped up by Detroit defenceman Mike Green. To his credit, as Green briefly let up and vented at the referee, Pyatt got up quickly and reclaimed the puck.
With the delayed penalty, the Senators kept possession and pulled their goalie to go 5-on-5 with the Wings. They realized time was ticking off on their penalty but not Detroit's, so at that point, head coach Guy Boucher cleverly threw Erik Karlsson and Mike Hoffman, two of his most skilled players, onto the ice.
In the playoffs, nine months before, Karlsson and Hoffman had famously connected on a rink-long alley-oop pass that Hoffman finished off with the Forsberg move.
This time, their job was to use their skill and speed to play keep away.
The Wings had their top power-play unit out there, not exactly their best defenders, and they simply couldn't get the puck back. To add to their frustration, they knew Ottawa's upcoming power play was just getting longer and longer.
Hoffman seemed to have the most fun with the keep-away game. He repeatedly drifted back into his own zone, acting as a relief valve, openly challenging the Wings to come and get him. Boucher then added more skill to the kill with Mark Stone and Matt Duchene. It was a thing of beauty.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBuX-yiTOec[/embed]
For the first time anyone could remember, the Senators had killed almost an entire two-minute penalty without giving up possession of the puck. It was one of the great penalty kills in Sens history and probably the last group of players you'd suspect to be involved in a killing.
And that's today's Sens Rewind.