Senators shine in face of adversity

OTTAWA -- The Senators already were without their captain, and then their best player went to the locker room after a high hit.

Funny enough, it was when the Senators were down two of their best players, Daniel Alfredsson and Jason Spezza, that they tied Wednesday night's Game 4, on Sergei Gonchar's power-play blast.

Spezza would return, but the Rangers held the league's fourth-leading scorer this season to one assist and zero shots on goal. This was a game, much like Game 2, when the Senators rallied from a deficit and won a game without their stars doing very much at all.

"One thing about this time of year, when you're competing when the games really mean something, you can learn a lot about your players and they can learn a lot about themselves," Senators coach Paul MacLean said. "We've talked all year about this being a growing year for us. Right now, we're really growing at a larger rate and that's really exciting."

Craig Anderson wasn't expected to challenge Henrik Lundqvist as the top-dog goaltender in this series, but the Senators' unassuming goaltender held his team together after the Rangers' two early goals.

"It's like when you're a kid playing Nintendo and you get off to a bad start in your game; you just hit the reset button, turn it off and start over," Anderson said. "That's what we needed to do."

Anderson made a key save on Marc Staal just seconds before Milan Michalek broke through on Lundqvist in the second period, and the Sens goaltender had huge saves in the third period and overtime before Kyle Turris won it.

"He was our best player in this game," MacLean said.

Turris, meanwhile, had a tie game on his stick in the final minute of Game 3, only to be stopped by Lundqvist. On the rush in OT, he didn't miss with a pinpoint wrist shot.

"Even in the pregame skate I was fighting the puck a little bit," Turris said. "Coach came over to me and just told me to relax, he did a great job of getting me to just be focused."

Alfredsson, knocked out of Game 2 with a concussion from Carl Hagelin's elbow to the head, skated the morning of Game 3 but was held out.

Now, thanks to some lesser lights, Alfredsson may get a chance to play before the Ottawa crowd in Monday's Game 6.