Senators Stay Alive With Win

Wade Redden’s power-play goal early in the third period at Buffalo, N.Y., ensured that the top-seeded Ottawa Senators wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Brian Pothier also scored and Ray Emery stopped 29 shots in a 2-1 victory over the Sabres on Thursday night that cut Buffalo’s lead to 3-1 in the Eastern Conference best-of-seven semifinal series.

The Senators avoided elimination by shaking off the frustrations of a 3-2 overtime loss at Buffalo on Wednesday night, and beat the Sabres in a playoff game for the first time since April 25, 1997, to end a nine-game skid.

Daniel Briere scored for Buffalo, whose five-game winning streak ended and who lost for the first time in five home playoff games.

The key to the victory was Emery, who has been knocked for playing poorly, particularly in Ottawa’s 7-6 overtime loss in Game 1, when he gave up seven goals on 23 shots.

Emery was at his sharpest of the series on Thursday in keeping the Senators’ season alive. He made several strong saves, three times foiling Ales Kotalik’s shots from the slot.

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The Edmonton Oilers forced the San Jose Sharks to play the longest game in their history Wednesday night at Edmonton, Canada, and then Shawn Horcoff broke their hearts.

Horcoff scored 2:24 into triple overtime, giving the Oilers a 3-2 victory and cutting the Sharks’ lead to 2-1 in the best-of-seven Western Conference semifinals.

The previous longest game for the Sharks was in 1995, when they beat Calgary in just under 22 total minutes of overtime.

It was the third-longest game in Oiler history. Their record stands at 57:34 of overtime in a 3-2 loss to Dallas in 1999.

The Oilers also set a team record for most shots in a game with 58. The old record was 54, set in regulation in 1984 by the high-flying Oilers of the Wayne Gretzky-Mark Messier era.

Horcoff scored after he picked up a backhand pass from Ryan Smyth and tapped it past goaltender Vesa Toskala.