Anaheim 3, Ottawa 2
The south’s gonna do it again. That’s the old Charlie Daniels Band tune that must be blaring in the Anaheim Ducks’ headquarters after they won Game 4 of this Stanley Cup series 3-2, to take a commanding 3-1 lead. 
The last two Cup winners have been from the Sun Belt of the United States, Tampa Bay and Carolina with the infamous lockout year sandwiched in between. This certainly isn’t what the Ottawa Senators, where the Cup was born, had in mind.
The Ducks, who have yet to lose two games in a row in the postseason, have now won their first road game after six tries in the Stanley Cup finals, and it was without their suspended defenseman Chris Pronger. But it didn’t start out so well for the Ducks. 
After dominating the first period, Daniel Alfredsson scored at the 19:59 mark of the period on a power play. The Senators peppered Jean-Sebastien Giguere with 13 shots. But the Ducks’ goaltender may have made his case for a second Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs’ most valuable player by stopping a number of point-blank chances. The Ducks looked sluggish in managing only two shots in the first period and Ottawa was on the attack throughout. “It ticked me off,” Giguere said of the late goal. “I think everybody else too. We were lucky to get out of that period only 1-0. They had all the momentum. We weren’t playing well.”
In the second, The Ducks played much better and Andy McDonald rewarded their play with two goals, exactly one minute apart. McDonald’s first goal came only four seconds after a hooking penalty to Chris Phillips ended. McDonald skated across the front of the net and fired back as he reached the left side, beating Andrej Meszaros and Jason Spezza and getting an assist off goaltender Ray Emery’s stick.
His next goal was just a bad play by Anton Volchenkov and Emery. McDonald took a pass from Rob Niedermayer as he crossed the blue-line, fooled Volchenkov and went around him, and then beat Emery with a backhander at the right post. Emery was down and out and McDonald’s goal looked like it was in slow motion.
The lead was short-lived as Bryan Murray countered by juggling his lines putting Alfredsson with Mike Fisher and Peter Schaefer and Patrick Eaves with Spezza and Dany Heatley. Heatley tied the game at 2-2 with two minutes left in the period; it was only his seventh goal of the playoffs, and his first point of the series. “He scored a big goal for us to get back in the game,” Alfredsson said. “It gave us some momentum going into the third. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the winning goal.”
Alfredsson, Ottawa’s captain, was the last-second hero in the first period, but turned into the villain in the final moments of the second. He inexplicably faked a shot on net, reloaded and fired the puck from center ice at Ducks captain Scott Niedermayer, which obviously angered the usually mild-mannered defenseman. “You can probably figure out what I thought,” Niedermayer said. “I wasn’t happy. No need to get hit with a puck at that point. I’m not going to say anything more.”
The shot total was just about as even as the score when the third period started, but then Chris Neil missed a big hit on McDonald and instead crashed into the boards. McDonald got the puck up ice to Teemu Selanne. Dustin Penner converted Selanne’s pass on a two-one-one rush at the 4:07 mark. “It was a great goal by Penner,” Selanne said. “I tried to look if there was something open to shoot, but there was not and so I decided to pass. It worked out well.”
The period ended with the Anaheim Ducks one step closer to the prize, and the Ducks and the Ottawa Senators will make the trip back to sunny southern California for Game 5, Wednesday night.
Flying in first class will be another traveler, the Stanley Cup and it’s entourage.
