Ottawa led 1-0 after 1 on a Daniel Alfredsson goal,The Devils tied it in the 2nd by Brian Gionta,a fluky goal by Ottawa's Dany Heatley gave the lead back to Ottawa and the Senators extended the lead to 3-1 on a Mike Fisher goal in the 3rd.
Jay Pandolfo cut the lead to 3-2,but the Devils could get no closer.
To me-The two main differences in this series are these-
1)Ottawa fires the puck at Marty Brodeur from any angle and occasionally the puck will go in.
The Devils rarely do that and I have been wishing they would start trying that all year.
2)The Senators just have so many more scoring options than the Devils do.
They have scorers on every line,the Devils on the other hand just have the EGG line and the Parise,Zajac,Langenbrunner line.
If the Devils fall behind they have troubles.
Ottawa on the other hand,has many skilled players and have a much easier time coming back.
The Devils have their backs against the wall,but it can be done.
In no game has 1 team dominated the other,with the exception of Ottawa's 1st period of Game 1.
In the 4 games,3 were 1 goal games and the other was a 2 goal game only because of an empty net goal.
Game 5 is Saturday night in New Jersey at 8;00
The Hagerstown Suns hung a rare loss on the streaking West Virginia Power this afternoon by a a score of 4-0.
A pitching duel took place for most of the first 5 innings between Hagerstown's Marco Estrada and West Virginia's Zach Braddock,until with 2 outs in the Suns 5th,Michael Martinez doubled.
Justin Maxwell then gave all the runs that the Suns needed by blasting a long home run off the pavilion in left field.
The homer was the 5th of the year for the Maryland product,who left the game an inning later with a leg injury.
No word on how serious an injury it is at this time.
Chris Marrero drove a homer in the 6th (his 3rd) and Erick San Pedro singled home a run in the 7th to add insurance runs.
Estrada picked up the W to move to 1-2 on the year,while Braddock took the loss to fall to 1-1.
The series concludes tomorrow night at 6;35.
Notes
More on "Towelgate"-The West Virginia players said that the amount of towels increased each of the last two days.
Congrats to the Hagerstown Suns for waking up on this topic.
Hagerstown has many more teams to make their 1st visit,hopefully they can dodge this type of
easily avoidable problems in the future.
I like the way the Milwaukee Brewers organization does things.
West Virginia pitchers keep track of radar gun,pitch location,pitch count and video.
I have not seen any other team do this much data collecting and this is such a smart move in my opinion.
The more data that you have,the better you can evaluate and make better decisions.
Hats off to the Brewers organization.
West Virginia is also the easiest team that I have ever had to get radar gun readings.
Why?
Because the player running the gun calls out the speed after every pitch to another hurler that is keeping everything on a palm pilot.
Easy for them and me!
I wish that the schedule right now had a matchup between the Power and the Augusta Greenjackets.
With the Power at 18-5 and the Greenjackets at 22-5,this would be quite a series.
And they do play each other later in the year,but likely by that time,the teams will look quite different and the match up that looks so glamorous now,will not look as dazzling then...
I am not sure whether this is the Suns fault or the South Atlantic League's fault,but this series could have been scheduled far differently.
With both teams leaving after tomorrow's game,wouldn't it have been better to make Wednesday's game the evening outing and Thursday's the 1;00 start?
Instead we had the early game on Wednesday and the getaway day being a getaway night.
Using the common sense method,both teams could have gotten on the road early and had extra time to prepare for their next series.
Just a small dose of common sense.
On the signing front,I finished up by getting the last few Power players that I had cards of.
Outfielders Chuckie Caufield and Stephen Chapman talked a bit and were quite friendly.
Also thanks to Tracy,who gave me an extra Brent Brewer card,since I did not have any to get signed.
Brewer was the Milwaukee squad;s 2nd round draft pick last year.
Also was able to get Suns manager Tom Herr for the 1st time all season as well.
For now- I am all caught up on autographs with the exception of the newest Sun-reliever Zack Baldwin.
Tomorrow will likely have some Random Ramblings and at night,the Hagerstown Suns vs West Virginia Power finale.
Photo credits
Hockey-AP Canada Photo-Tom Hanson
Justin Maxwell-Ryan Heimberger
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