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Senator look to close out series with Penguins

Apr 19, 2007 - 2:20 PM Pittsburgh at Ottawa 7:00 pm EDT Eastern Conference quarterfinal Ottawa leads, 3-1

OTTAWA (Ticker) -- The Ottawa Senators have been in this position before and succeeded in every instance.

That's bad news for the Pittsburgh Penguins, who trail the Senators three games to one in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarterfinal series.

Since joining the NHL in 1992, Ottawa is 4-0 in series they have led three-games-to-one. The Senators look to improve on that record when they host the Penguins in Game Five on Thursday.

The Penguins will need to get its power play on track if they're going to extend the series. Pittsburgh went 0-for-5 with the man advantage in a 2-1 loss in Game Four and are 0-for-9 over the last two games.

Pittsburgh's top two scorers during the regular season - Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin - were held without a point in Tuesday's game.

Pittsburgh also needs to figure out a way to slow down the Senators' top line of Daniel Alfredsson, Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza, which has combined for 12 points in the series. Ottawa has outshot Pittsburgh, 125-90, in the four games.

Ray Emery made 23 saves in Game Four and defenseman Anton Volchenkov scored the deciding goal with 10:29 remaining in regulation on Tuesday. Volchenkov had only one goal in 78 regular season games.

Eighteen-year-old Jordan Staal scored the only goal for Pittsburgh, which has scored six of its 10 goals in the series during the third period.