Halloween in Ottawa: 'Where the goal was, it was no longer'

Written by Steven Buono
Wednesday, 04 November 2009 18:46

How many hockey heroes in their own minds have done this late at night at some ice rink, DIR or otherwise?

Close in on a cage, shooting and circling it, and at will jamming rebounds as you go. All the while your opponents’ crease is reduced to frayed uniforms and shards of stick.

Almost half-a-dozen shots are fired, but it’s no cigar — smoked as thoroughly as that defense might be.

All this happened in real time, way, way up in the big time in Ottawa to Senators forward Ryan Shannon, 26 of Darien, in a fittingly metaphysical sort of 3-1 loss to the Thrashers on Halloween afternoon.

Chief witch doctor: visiting Atlanta goaltender Ondrej Pavelec.

Ottawa put 51 shots on his goal — 43 of them in the last two periods, and half of them quality chances — with no Senator firing more than Shannon, who tied for the lead with seven whacks.

Atlanta: 21 shots on goal.

But this is not a horror story.

“We couldn’t buy a goal,” said a not displeased Ottawa coach Corey Clouston. “The way we played — that’s exactly how we have to play.”

And it was the way Shannon has threatened to play since he began playing in the NHL.

“It was a good flurry, I felt in the zone,” said Shannon. “It’s funny how — you know — you grind and you grind, and you grind and grind, trying to come back, and feel good. And then it can all just turn around in that one shift.”

What was he turning around?

Injury, recovery, rehabilitation and reentering the roster.

Shannon was injured in game one of the season at MSG, suffering his second concussion in roughly a year.

He’s had to work his way back into the line-up.

Storming the Thrashers’ net marked that work as a job well done.

“Since coming back from the injury every game’s been an improvement,” Shannon said. “And the last game (vs. Atlanta) was probably a huge step forward. I felt my confidence come back, I felt more patient with the puck. And the game started to slow down a bit.”

Not if you were the Thrashers. Particularly not if you were Pavelec (50 saves).

Not late in the third period with Ottawa down a goal.

That’s when the game started to speed up — and spin like an atomic top — with Shannon spinning right around the Atlanta net, firing as he went in commando fashion.

“Yeah — it was four chances,” said Shannon. “That — I mean — all four of them, could have gone in. But it ended up that none of them went in.”

Shannon wasn’t alone. Captain, top scorer Daniel Alfredsson had five shots — sole Sens scorer Mike Fisher matched Shannon’s seven-high.

“We were on the powerplay, and the way that the shift started was a breakout,” said Shannon. “And we got the puck on the half-wall and there was a shot from the hash marks on the wall, to the front of the net.”

And that’s where Shannon went.

“I came down from the point, and there was a juicy rebound,” said Shannon. “It looked like I had an open net.”

He did have the puck.

“And so I got it and I fired it,” he said. “As hard and as quick as I could.”

The house was on its feet.

Pavelec left his.

“The goalie came across, he never gave up on the play, and he made a good save,” said Shannon. “Puck ended up behind the net.”

Shannon sliced a counterclockwise 360 with his blades around it.

“I circled around the net, and got around a sliding defenseman who had lost his stick,” Shannon said. “It was utter chaos.”

The last Thrashers defenseman sank into the ice that seemed to melt beneath Atlanta’s skates with Shannon’s quickening strides.

“And I went around him, and I fired the puck and it went off the goalie’s shoulder, back behind him,” said Shannon. “And he reached behind and took the puck out with his glove.”

Atlanta’s apparent meltdown wasn’t over yet.

“And then it was sitting in front again, off of another flurry,” he said. “And right as I was about to shoot the puck one of their defensemen jumped into the net, and moved the net over to the side.”

Presto chango, with more Halloween fun?

“Where the goal was, it was no longer,” Shannon said. “And the puck went wide.

“Because of that we ended up getting another powerplay.”

But Atlanta found a way out of the Ottawa storm to sail home with two points.

“The thought goes out of it, it’s just reaction,” said Shannon who played 15:28. “And you just listen to your body’s instincts... If you hesitate and you think for one second, the play’s over and you’re backchecking.”

But there’ll be no back pedaling from Shannon. He’s putting it all on the line this season, looking to break through on the scoring front when Ottawa hosts the Lightning tonight.

“There’s a sense of, you throw out self preservation,” he said. “You do whatever you can. You throw your body into certain situations, you don’t know what the outcome is going to be.

“You just hope that it comes out well.”

The off-season could not have come out better.

“It was very exciting coming into a season with a one-way contract,” said Shannon. “And playing the first game at MSG, in front of my friends and family.

“Training camp went well, I felt very good.”

Like with changing the tone of his season with a single shift on Saturday, things suddenly shifted in the wrong direction on opening night, also late in the game.

“And then, in the third period I took a hit and had a concussion,” Shannon said. “And so it’s really been about trying to get my confidence and my timing.”

He works as hard as anyone to stay sharp all summer long in Darien.

“All the things that you work hard on over the summer kind of went away when I got hit,” said Shannon. “So, it’s about getting that back.”

Ottawa, at 6-4-2 and tied for sixth in the Eastern Conference, has been an egalitarian group through the first month of 2009-’10.

“Who ever is playing well plays on the top two lines,” said Shannon. “It’s kind of been part of our success early in the year. We’ve had scoring from a lot of different people.”

The team, and Shannon, are keen to break out outright this month.

“The exciting thing is that we are not running on all cylinders yet,” Shannon said. “I have yet to score. And there are a couple of other guys that haven’t scored yet. And so the feeling is that once we break through, and get everybody going, we are going to be a real dangerous team.”

Another concussion

“It was a lot different,” Shannon said of his second hard knock. “I never lost consciousness. It was just kind of a bump. And the symptoms were pretty severe that night. But when I woke up in the morning, it was gone.”

He was sick the whole ride home from the Garden.

“It was a bad headache and you just don’t feel like yourself,” said Shannon. “I’ve had a couple of them. And every time I get one, you have to be more and more cautious.”

He missed a couple of weeks of ice entirely.

“I felt like I could come back and play right away,” he said. “But the protocol right now with NHL teams and head injuries is pretty conservative.”

Any words for his fellow-Darienites?

“Just tune into the game against Tampa,” Shannon said. “See two five-foot, something (number) 26’s going at it.”

Good friend and off-season training partner Martin St. Louis, who skated with many other pros and prospects at Darien Ice Rink last July — in a fund-raiser for the Obie Harrington-Howes Foundation for people living with spinal injury — is back at Scotiabank Place this evening.

“Every once in a while if there’s a tv time-out, he’ll come over and say something, I’ll go over at him,” said Shannon of the Lightning's compact bolt. “Last game there was a little scrum in front of the net where we went at each other.

“He’s an awesome role model, and he helps me out.”