Senators jump out to very early lead in Game 3 against the Penguins (Video)
The Senators and the Penguins have struggled getting on the board in the tightly contested Eastern Conference finals, but broke it open early in Game 3.
The Ottawa Senators don’t have home-ice advantage in the Eastern Conference finals against the Pittsburgh Penguins, so they’ll need to take all the breaks they can get to get past the defending Stanley Cup champions.
Enter Mike Hoffman, who decided to bust open the scoring incredibly early in Game 3 as he scored for the Senators just 48 seconds into the first period.
Hoffman caught a lucky break from a pass that ricocheted off the boards behind Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, and clanked home the first goal of the game in the series’ first game in Ottawa.
Mike Hoffman, :48 into Game 3
— SI NHL (@SI_NHL) May 18, 2017
Sens up 1-0 https://t.co/fTJoDTn8PK pic.twitter.com/sraFBpLZrJ
The early scoring is definitely something hockey fans following along with this series will appreciate, as the two teams have struggled to get on the board at all throughout the first two games of the conference finals. The Senators took Game 1, 2-1, while the Penguins took Game 2, 1-0.
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The Senators are certainly the underdog in this series, and many counted them out almost immediately when they advanced to the conference finals over the New York Rangers. However, they’ve given last year’s Stanley Cup champs a run for their money in this series, utilizing their 1-3-1 trap to perfection to give the Penguins some fits.
Hopefully the two teams can provide some fireworks in Game 3 to add some intrigue to this series, or else we could be in for another 1-0 snooze fest in such a pivotal moment in the NHL postseason. Even one more goal would break the boring stretch the series has gone through, and that seems easy enough, right?