OTTAWA — The Stanley Cup Playoffs can be cruel.

After an eight-year playoff drought, the Ottawa Senators‘ playoff journey may not even last eight days.

For the second straight game in this first-round series with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Senators lost 3-2 in overtime after a resilient third-period comeback. The Senators are now in an unenviable position, down 3-0 to an archrival.

“It’s disheartening, to say the least,” said coach Travis Green.

The last two games have provided the deepest heartbreaks.

“Back-to-back games. It’s a one-shot game,” said captain Brady Tkachuk.

The lead-up to Thursday night’s game was euphoric for a fan base and organization starved of any semblance of meaning for almost a decade.

From Lyndon Slewidge’s return to sing ‘O Canada’ to Craig Anderson hyping up the crowd, the scene was set for the Senators to deliver some playoff magic.

“It was unbelievable,” said Tkachuk. “It’s probably the coolest atmosphere I’ve ever played in. Honestly, I can’t really describe it, because I came out there and had immediate goosebumps, chills.”

As with any home game against the Maple Leafs there was concerns of a blue-and-white invasion ahead of Game 3. But Senators fans packed the building to support their team in a way that’s been missed for a generation.

That’s what hockey is about. The passion.

“(The) fans were incredible”, said Claude Giroux, who scored Ottawa’s first goal

No matter what happens the rest of the series, the fact that the Senators have returned to relevancy should not be discounted. The future is bright in Ottawa, led by Tkachuk, who showed much of a valiant leader he is by scoring the tying goal in Game 3 while playing through, as he calls it, “bumps and bruises” that at one point forced him back to the room.

“There’s never a doubt that he was going to be a big game player, and he is (one)”, said Green about his captain.

Beyond Tkachuk, the Senators have a core headlined by Tim Stutzle and Jake Sanderson, who are both under 23 years of age and signed for the next six seasons. Ridly Greig has emerged as the ultimate pest, causing havoc in each game this series, including drawing two penalties within a minute in Game 3. The Senators should be a playoff contender for years to come.

“We’re doing a lot of good things, but sometimes it comes down to Lady Luck,” said goaltender Linus Ullmark, another key part of the core. “And you know what? With Lady Luck, you gotta earn it. That’s what you gotta do, earn it every night. It’s not going to come for free, that’s for sure.”

And on Simon Benoit’s seeing-eye shot in overtime?

“I didn’t see anything,” Ullmark said.

We could go over every analytic or metric that suggests Ottawa should, at the very least, be down 2-1 in the series. We won’t.

Sometimes you deserve better and lose, but we mustn’t forget the moments of joy along the way.

In Ottawa’s 2007 cup run, what do fans remember more: Daniel Alfredsson’s OT winner in Game 5 against Buffalo or the Chris Phillips own goal in Game 5 of the final?

That’s what Thursday night was about. The return of the Ottawa Senators back on to the National Hockey League’s biggest stage.

Game 3 in many ways mirrored Game 2. The Senators peppered Anthony Stolarz with shots, but only beat him twice. Heading into the game, the narrative was that the Senators weren’t getting enough slot shots, but on Thursday Ottawa had nine to Toronto’s six. Once again, the Senators didn’t score on any of their high-danger chances. In the series, Ottawa has had 33 high-danger chances to 27 for Toronto, according to Natural Stat-Trick. Unfortunately, the Senators have the fourth-worst shooting percentage in the playoffs at seven per cent while Toronto is at an obscene 18 per cent. Both would be unsustainable in a regular season, but that doesn’t matter now.

What’s the goal in Game 4 for Ottawa?

“Have one more goal than them,” said Giroux. “It’s a tight game. There’s not much out there (between) both sides.”

The Auston Matthews line, consisting of Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies, has routinely gone up against Shane Pinto’s trio with Greig and Michael Amadio in this series. With the last change on home ice, Green put out Pinto every moment he could and, for most of the game, it worked as the Pinto line allowed only four shots against with Matthews on the ice. But two of those four shots ended up in the back of the net, including the overtime winner when Matthews beat Pinto on a face-off to set up Benoit’s point shot.

That’s been the story of the series. One team capitalizes and the other doesn’t. 

Clearly a major reason Ottawa is down 3-0 is that they’ve had the inferior goaltender, but Thursday was not on Ullmark. In Game 3 the Leafs scored on one shot through traffic and two back-door tap-ins, including another goal off a skate. Questions will surround Ullmark as a playoff performer, but they feel more apt to Connor Hellebuyck. Both are Vezina winners who haven’t always made the big save in the playoffs, but neither allows bad goals either.

Of course, there is still hope, too. The Senators actually have a player who has been a part of a team that erased a 3-0 deficit. Giroux and the Flyers did just that in 2010 against the Bruins and eventually reached the Stanley Cup Final before losing to the Blackhawks. The Senators have been close enough to the Maple Leafs that if their luck turns around, they could climb back in the series.

And Ottawa’s captain still believes in miracles.

“I watched the Red Sox vs. Yankees documentary when they came back from 0-3,” said Tkachuk. “So, it’s been done before and (there is) belief that it can happen again.”