History provides hope for Senators team on the ropes

The bad news: when you’re down 3-0 in a series, you’re not only up against the ropes, but the twine of said ropes are rapidly fraying.

The good — or, at least, better — news? Though digging out of an 3-0 hole remains a Herculean task, it’s proven more doable in the past 15 years of the Stanley Cup Playoffs than through the first 95 years of the NHL.

If the Ottawa Senators — who trail the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-0 in their first-round series — need some inspiration, just 10 months ago, the Edmonton Oilers dropped the first three contests of the Stanley Cup Final to the Florida Panthers, only to come roaring back and force a Game 7.

You get back in a series the same way a rich person goes broke — slowly to start, then all at once. First, you win Game 4 and nobody pays it any mind because they were giving you that one based purely on desperation. At that point, though, all you must do is win one hockey game and, suddenly, your opponent’s advantage is down to one and you’re another single W away from levelling things completely.

Right now, that feels a long way away for the Senators. But they’ve lost two overtime games to Toronto and require only a modest two-game winning streak to completely change the temperature of this series.

If the Sens need inspiration, here’s a look at the instances in NHL history where a team fell behind 3-0 and came back to either force a Game 7 or win the series outright. Rather than go case-by-case, we’ll group them according to era.

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World War II

There was a cluster of 3-0 comebacks in the late 1930s and early ’40s — and two involved the Leafs.

In 1939, the Rangers — in a first-round series that doubled as a Stanley Cup semifinal — clawed out of a 3-0 hole versus the Bruins, only to lose Game 7 in triple-overtime. Ouch.

Three years later, in 1942, we got our first successful monster comeback, when Toronto dug all the way out of the grave to win a seven-game Stanley Cup Final versus the Detroit Red Wings.

Another three years after that, the Wings nearly returned the favour, but Toronto held tough in Game 7 to claim the Cup.

The utterly insane 1975 New York Islanders

This is straight nuts.

Five years before their dynastic run began, a young Islanders team made its first-ever post-season appearance in the 1975 playoffs. After winning a best-of-three preliminary-round matchup with the New York Rangers, the Isles faced the Pittsburgh Penguins in a quarterfinal showdown. 

In Game 1, they scored two third-period goals to close the gap, but fell 5-4. After dropping Game 2 3-1, the Isles scored with 52 seconds left in Game 3 to pull within one goal of the Penguins. However, Pittsburgh replied an empty-netter, which seemed to seal the game and series.

Nope.

Coach Al Arbour made a critical switch, subbing 24-year-old goalie Billy Smith out in favour of backup Glenn “Chico” Resch. After giving up 14 goals in the first three games of the series, Resch and the Isles surrendered just four in the next four games, all wins. In Game 7, Resch blanked the Pens and the Islanders won 1-0 on Ed Westfall’s third-period tally.

Believe it or not, there’s more.

In the next series, a semifinal set with the defending Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers, the Isles once again fell behind 3-0, only to — after winning Game 4 in overtime — rally back and force a Game 7.

There was no storybook ending this time, however, as the Flyers closed out New York with a 4-1 victory and went on to claim their second straight title.

The modern era

From 1945 to 2010 — a 65-year span — those Islanders were the only team to even force a Game 7 after falling behind 3-0. Since 2010, however, it’s happened five times.

The 2010 Flyers might go down as the all-time comeback kings, as they not only dug out of a 3-0 hole in the second round versus the Bruins — winning Game 4 in extra time — they went into Boston for Game 7, fell behind 3-0 in the first period and came back to claim that decisive contest 4-3 on Simon Gagne’s third-period power-play marker.

Philly made the final, fell behind the Chicago Blackhawks 2-0, levelled the series at home, but ultimately lost in six games.

Just one year later, two teams dug out of 3-0 deficits in the same playoff season. First, the defending-champion Hawks scared the absolute daylights out of the Vancouver Canucks in the first round, winning Games 4, 5 and 6 to force a Game 7 showdown in Vancouver. The Hawks actually took Games 4 and 5 by a combined scored of 12-2, then grabbed Game 6 in OT. In Game 7, Vancouver clung to a 1-0 lead that Jonathan Toews erased through a short-handed goal with 1:56 remaining in the third.

Alex Burrows rescued Vancouver from the nightmare, though, by blasting the OT winner past Corey Crawford.

En route to the final that year, Vancouver played San Jose in the Western Conference final. That Sharks club was coming off a massive scare of its own, as it jumped out to a 3-0 lead on the Red Wings in Round 2, only to see the cagey Wings come all the way back to force Game 7. The Sharks managed to eke out the series with a 3-2 home-ice win in the final contest.

Three years later, though, San Jose did fully faceplant against the Los Angeles Kings.

San Jose put 17 goals past the Kings in the first three games of the series before L.A. clamped up and came all the way back. The Kings won Game 4 6-3 on home ice, then allowed just two total goals in Games 5, 6 and 7, the final victory being a resounding 5-1 triumph on home ice.

After humiliating their California cousins to the north in Round 1, the Kings pulled off another comeback against their other in-state rival, the Anaheim Ducks, in Round 2. The Ducks held a 3-2 series advantage, but the Kings won Games 6 and 7 to claim the series. Eight victories later, Los Angeles had its second Cup in three years.

Ten years after that, the Oilers were hoping to hoist the Cup in 2024, but their commendable comeback bid fell one game short in South Florida.

Maybe now the “Pesky Sens” can follow the lead of the resilient clubs that have staged massive comebacks in the recent past.

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