It took eight years of learning to get these Ottawa Senators back to the playoffs. 

Now, they get to go to school on playoff Game 1, a 6-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs that was not as lopsided as that score might suggest. The score matched the 6-2 penalty deficit for Ottawa. 

On an Easter Sunday Baptism By Fire, there were plenty of lessons to go around. 

To start with the obvious, the young Senators who dream of a Stanley Cup parade down Bank Street one day won’t get there with a parade to the penalty box. 

The Leafs scored three power-play goals on six opportunities — some of the calls “soft” (you could see Adam Gaudette mouth the word repeatedly), other penalties so obvious you could almost imagine fans barking at their TV screens:

“What were you thinking, Ridley Greig?!”

Greig’s cross-check to the face of veteran Leaf centre John Tavares was first called a major and was then reduced to a minor penalty after review. 

No matter. The Leafs, under enormous pressure to get off to a good start in a first round that has so often flummoxed them, recognized an Easter basket when it was presented to them and gobbled up all of the chocolate contents. 

Boom. Tavares on the power play. 

Boom. William Nylander, off another faceoff win. 

Combined power-play time required to complete these killer goals: 12 seconds. 

What had been a manageable 2-1 deficit after one period became an insurmountable 4-1 lead in a heartbeat. 

This was playoff hockey 101. What not to do as a young player getting his first taste of post-season experience. 

Don’t go beyond your capabilities. Don’t get so amped up that it becomes a liability rather than a strength. 

More than half of Ottawa’s roster was playing their first playoff game, including eight drafted by the Senators. 

It’s easy to gripe about the calls. The boarding call on Tim Stutzle to get the parade started was questionable, considering there had not been a call to that point. 

Wait, was this a makeup for the non-call on Daniel Alfredsson for the much more obvious boarding infraction against Darcy Tucker in a 2002 series between the Sens and Leafs?

More likely, the officials were looking to call something just to let everyone know they were on the job. And you thought to yourself, Ottawa is going to get the next power play. 

This is typical game management by officials. 

Except that Greig flashed that stick into the face of Tavares and then Gaudette cross-checked Auston Matthews, who went down in a heap. This was during a penalty kill, when killers generally get a licence to be tough on attackers. But the arm went up and the die was cast. 

It was as though the Senators felt they needed to go a step beyond their usual belligerent selves to prove they could handle the physicality of a playoff series. 

Here’s the thing. Taking a breath and staying in control is going to go a long way toward evening this series 1-1 with a win on Tuesday night. 

The anguished face of head coach Travis Green told the story of Ottawa’s reaction on the bench to some of the penalties, especially the Gaudette cross-check and at least one of the two calls on Drake Batherson. 

You know that same head coach who spoke of Toronto “selling calls” will be reminding his players at their meeting today (no practice) that the recipe for getting back into this series is to play a more disciplined game. Get back to the kind of hockey that led the Senators to a 3-0 series sweep over the Leafs during the regular season. 

Beyond the penalties, the Senators held their ground at even strength. That they outshot the host Leafs 33-24 was a small miracle given all the time on the penalty kill. 

Drake Batherson generated four shots on goal and looked dangerous throughout. 

Captain Brady Tkachuk led the visitors with five shots and had a presence. But was it even possible to live up to the advanced Brady hype going into Game 1?

Flashbacks to the 4 Nations tournament and the fights started by the Tkachuk brothers on Team USA led to the rare recognition of an Ottawa-based hockey player throughout the United States. 

How about those wild and crazy Tkachuk brothers!?

Tkachuk was fine in the opener, but when he failed to score on a second-period breakaway, Mitch Marner had buried a nifty top-corner goal to give Toronto a 2-0 lead in the first period, it told a story. Tkachuk will be better in Game 2. Has to be.

The Leafs big boys were on and Ottawa’s guys couldn’t get their guns out of their holsters. 

Stutzle had six more hits (9) than he had shots on goal (3). 

Star defenceman Jake Sanderson was somehow unleashed and under-used at less than 19 minutes played. 

We all wondered if Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz could transfer his regular season excellence into playoff stability and there was a sense that Ottawa let him off the hook. Stolarz was brilliant in the clutch, stopping Tkachuk and Shane Pinto on glorious chances, but early in the game, he was giving up rebounds. His failure to control a rebound led to the Batherson goal to cut Toronto’s lead to 2-1. 

At the other end, Linus Ullmark knew he was expected to come up big. Despite his advantage of playoff experience with Boston (though with mediocre numbers), Ullmark’s play was uneven. The Leafs goals were a combination of good shots or deflected ones, but road teams need a goalie to shine. And Ullmark did not do that, yielding six goals on 24 shots, including two on five first-period shots. 

Post-game, Ullmark said that he did his best and will continue to do so. 

But his best will have to be better than that. 

Show me a team where the stars outshine the other team’s best and the goalie is better, and I will show you the series winner. 

In Game 1, where the so-called Core Four racked up nine points and Stolarz outplayed Ullmark, this played out. But it was just one game. As big as Game 1 can be. 

Three times in their past playoff lives, the Senators have dropped the first game of an opening series and come back to win. 

In 2002, the Sens lost the opener to Philadelphia and then won the next four straight over the Flyers. 

The 2003 team lost to the New York Islanders and also won the next four en route to the Eastern Conference Final. 

In 2017, the Senators dropped the opener to Boston and won the series in six games, the start of another trip to the conference final. 

Those were more experienced playoff teams. 

But now the 2025 Sens can say they’re all playoff-tested. They’ve had their Easter Sunday baptism. 

Game 2 Tuesday looms beyond large before the series heads to Ottawa Thursday for the city’s first playoff hockey in eight years. Buckle up.