Senators Are Sent Packing by Underdog Maple Leafs

A year ago, Toronto’s Yanic Perreault was knocked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs by the Ottawa Senators. This time he returned the favor.

Perreault scored two goals Wednesday night as the Maple Leafs beat the Senators, 3-1, at Air Canada Centre to complete a surprising four-game sweep of their first-round series.

For Perreault, who injured a knee in last spring’s series against the Senators and was lost for the playoffs, motivation was easy on this night.

“We didn’t want to go back to Ottawa, for sure,” said Perreault, who scored both of his goals in the first period to rally the Leafs from a 1-0 deficit. “We wanted to get it over with tonight. I thought the first 10 minutes we didn’t get our legs going as much as we wanted, but after that we played well.”

This was supposed to be Ottawa’s time to shine. The Senators, who lost in six games to the Leafs last year, went 5-0 against Toronto in the regular season and were seeded second in the Eastern Conference with 109 points.

Instead, they were outhustled and outplayed almost at every turn in every game and lost their fourth straight playoff series, scoring only three times. It was a mark of offensive futility exceeded only twice in playoff history. The Boston Bruins scored only two goals in a four-game series in 1935 against Toronto, and the Montreal Canadiens duplicated the dubious feat in 1952 against Detroit.

“We didn’t follow our game plan, and once we lost the first game in overtime, we couldn’t really find ourselves,” Senator captain Daniel Alfredsson said. “It was just a matter of us not getting the offense going.”

Washington 4, Pittsburgh 3--Jeff Halpern scored Washington’s first even-strength goal of the playoffs 4:01 into overtime to hold off a late Penguin rally as the Capitals evened the series at Pittsburgh.

Steve Konowalchuk scored two power-play goals and set up Halpern’s goal--Washington’s first without a man advantage since its final regular-season game--as the Capitals made it 2-2 going into Game 5 on Saturday in Washington.

After Pittsburgh defenseman Marc Bergevin couldn’t clear the puck from behind his net, the Capitals regained possession and Halpern one-timed Konowalchuk’s pass to the left circle past rookie goalie Johan Hedberg.

Colorado 5, Vancouver 1--Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic and Eric Messier scored 38 seconds apart in the third period at Vancouver, Canada, as the Avalanche completed a sweep of the first-round playoff series.

The goals came on Colorado’s first three shots of the period as the Avalanche built a 4-0 lead en route to the series win.

Alex Tanguay made the score 5-1 at 17:25 with an empty-net goal, and Chris Drury had the first goal and three assists for Colorado. The Canucks pulled goalie Dan Cloutier for an extra skater with more than three minutes left to play.

Mattias Ohlund ended Colorado goalie Patrick Roy’s bid for his 16th playoff shutout when he scored on the power play with 6:33 left to play. Vancouver was eliminated quickly from its first playoff appearance since 1996.

Carolina 3, New Jersey 2--The short-handed Hurricanes found their dormant offense to avoid a sweep by the Devils at Raleigh, N.C.

Rod Brind’Amour scored 46 seconds into overtime as the Hurricanes, missing injured captain Ron Francis and top rookie Shane Willis, stayed alive. The Devils still lead the series, 3-1.

Sami Kapanen and David Tanabe also scored power-play goals.

The defending Stanley Cup champions came out flat, took too many penalties and were stopped by Carolina goalie Arturs Irbe for most of the game to send the best-of-seven series back to New Jersey for Game 5 on Friday night.

Around the League

New Hampshire goaltender Ty Conklin has signed a three-year contract with the Edmonton Oilers. Conklin was a finalist for the 2001 Hobey Baker Award as college hockey’s top player.