Superstition ain’t the way for these ‘now’s now’ Ottawa Senators

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This is how it works in hockey.

The Ottawa Senators head into the city that never sleeps and fall asleep in the first 10 minutes of Games 3 and 4, the New York Rangers decisively winning both games by an identical score, 4-1.

The Eastern Conference semi-final series returns Tuesday to Madison Square Garden for a sixth game, one that – given the dominance of the Rangers in their home rink – could stretch this to a seventh and deciding game back in Ottawa on Thursday.

Or, of course, it could mean the end of the series if the Senators can somehow reverse their bad luck in Manhattan.

The players addressed this at Monday's optional practice. They did it not by Xs and Os on the game board, not by working on their troubled power play, not by switching up the lines – but by changing their seating stalls in the visitors' dressing room.

Head coach Guy Boucher protested that the musical chairs had nothing to do with him. "I'm not superstitious," he said. "I like to go against superstition. I don't want to be slave to any superstition."

Then he must not know the history of the team he was brought in to coach this year.

After all, the player Boucher gave so much credit to after Ottawa's 5-4 overtime victory on Saturday afternoon, Chris Neil, puts brand-new laces in his skates before every game.

Superstition is as much a player in hockey as pucks and sticks. The Senators will be playing against a team, after all, that in 1994 finally broke free of a 54-year curse – supposedly laid on the team by Red Dutton, who blamed the demise of his New York Americans on the Rangers – by defeating the Vancouver Canucks to claim the Stanley Cup.

The Senators, too, have a long history of clinging to bizarre beliefs. Back in the early years of the franchise, forward Tom Chorske used to carry around a little Buddha statue in his shaving kit, the players convinced that this curious talisman was somehow spreading luck among them. Bruce Gardiner once snapped a scoring slump by repeatedly flushing the blade of his hockey stick in the dressing room toilet, leading several goal-starved teammates to do the same.

Boucher, however, wants nothing to do with such malarkey.

"I don't like to be slave to things that don't matter," he said. "Now's now, before's before, after's after. The only thing that we control is now."

The year the players believed in Chorske's "Buddha Power," the young, inexperienced Senators took the Buffalo Sabres to seven games before losing the opening-round series in overtime.

A year later they reached the second round – in part, the players believed, because of the platinum-blond dyed hair of goaltender Damian Rhodes. They lasted 11 games before falling to the Washington Capitals.

There have been far more sensational – and successful – superstitions in hockey: Kate Smith singing God Bless America before Philadelphia Flyers playoff games, Montreal Canadiens goaltender Patrick Roy talking to his goalposts during the team's successful run for the Stanley Cup, the Toronto Maple Leafs' "Pyramid Power" under coach Red Kelly, Wayne Gretzky applying baby powder to the blade of his stick to soften the passes, Phil Esposito refusing to stay in any hotel room with the number 13. But the Senators have, at times, certainly been "slaves to things that don't matter."

"We don't want luck," Boucher said. "We want to deserve to win."

If they are going to win in New York, his Senators are going to have to be a different team than the confused group that assembled here for Games 3 and 4 and were very badly outplayed.

That the Senators are leading this best-of-seven series 3-2 is somewhat surprising, given that over those five games the Rangers have held a lead for 180:12, while the Senators have been in front for a mere 13:10. But Ottawa has been in front when it matters – at the end of regular time or the final whistle of overtime.

No wonder a New York tabloid ran a full-page photograph of Ottawa's winning overtime goal from Saturday's game with the headline "Chokers."

Still, there are believers to be found in this city. While the Senators worked out Monday morning, a touring school group poured into the stands chanting, "Let's go, Rangers!" – until an adult supervisor told them they'd be asked to leave if they didn't stop.

"They've got good backing, that's for sure," said Ottawa forward Clarke MacArthur with a laugh. "You can't even have an optional skate without getting chimed out there."

On Tuesday evening that small group of schoolkids will become 18,006 mostly adults of various levels of maturity. There is already enough dissension among Rangers fans on social media – mostly directed toward head coach Alain Vigneault – that it could easily turn nasty if fans think a "choke" is indeed in the works.

And it won't matter if the loss comes out of the Senators living in the "now," as their coach wishes, or out of some mysterious karma tied to where they sat in the dressing room.

Luck or no luck, it will be a challenge.

"It's probably going to be the toughest one," captain Erik Karlsson said.

For both teams, regardless of the outcome.