Playoff Memories XIV: You've Lost That Sweeping Feeling

It would probably be more accurate to say you've never had that sweeping feeling but no song's title fit as well as the famous Top Gun tune. In the sens' history they have never been on the good end of a sweep. Twice they have watched their opposition celebrate their series victory in the quickest way possible. One was 1999 to slugnation and the other is the focus of today's memory (which Muppet had to remind me to put up).

In 2001, so the story goes, the senators entered their series as heavy favourites only to run into an opponent that was apparently built to sweep them. The senators faced their own 3-0 deficit on the road in a series that also featured two OT wins for the buds. slugnation takes some solace in the fact that their losses have been close but the reality is that sans Miller this series would be a laugher. Not so in 2001. The sens had a legitimate beef that they were being swept aside by a team that got by on unreal tending by CuJo is his prime and a lot of desire. The Leafs took the advantage that their goalie gave them and swept aside a dispirited senators squad in the fourth game to move onto the second round.

The pertinent lesson for the senators is to step on the throats of the slugs. Jay's post outlines the importance of putting the slugs out of their misery. A slugs win tonight gives them a ray of hope going back to Buffalo. A win there and the media pressure on the sens gets ramped up as stories listing past choke jobs are rehashed. A loss in game 6 brings the mustachioed fanbase back to Canada with a world of momentum as sens fans frantically look up how to perform the Heimlich manouevre. A re-energized slugs team that wins game 6 would send the series back to The Queen City for a game 7 in front of a rabid home crowd that would have probably re-discovered religion.

Then the sens would be just 60 minutes away from a historic collapse and submitting the rest of us to another year of arrogant and smug slugs fans. Not to mention the deluge of insane posts (for reference, see BfloBlog's Sabreslegends) that would probably infect our little corner of the internets. So for the good of all mankind, please squeeze the life out of the sabres. Try to do it something like this ;)