In the first three months of this season the Ottawa Senators were the powerhouse of the Eastern Conference.

Unlike the Anaheim Ducks, who defeated them in the 2007 Stanley Cup finals, the Senators bolted from the gate this season playing like a team on a mission to avenge their woeful performance last spring and earn another shot at the Cup.

While the Ducks struggled through the usual “Stanley Cup hangover” that plagues finalists in recent years, the Senators were one of the best teams in the league, dominating the Eastern Conference and challenging the Detroit Red Wings for best team overall.

Goaltender Ray Emery was slow to recover from off-season wrist surgery but Martin Gerber stepped up and played well, at one point leading all Eastern Conference goalies in wins.

The Senators vaunted defense corps exhibited its usual skill, while the offense was again powered by Ottawa’s “big three” of Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza and team captain Daniel Alfredsson.

Throughout the fall new Senators GM Bryan Murray sought to bring in another scoring forward, and it seemed likely the Sens might deal from their blueline depth by the trade deadline to do so.

Otherwise, life was peachy in Canada’s capital city. The Senators were dominant, no one was even close to them in the Conference standings and they appeared destined to be this season’s “Beasts of the East”.

But since beating the Red Wings 3-2 in a nationally televised match-up on Hockey Night in Canada on January 12th, things have gone horribly wrong for the Senators, losing seven of their last ten games heading into the first full week of February, most of those losses to lesser teams.

It’s more than just a slump or a “Stanley Cup finals hangover” as some has suggested.

Gerber, who had played so well earlier in the season, has struggled between the pipes, as has Emery, whose clashes with teammates, coaches and management overshadow his poor play.

The defense, once the Senators strength, has been anything but over the past month, with uncharacteristic breakdowns and careless turnovers in their own zone.

In the aforementioned seven losses in their last ten games the Senators offense managed to score only 10 goals, a shocking decline in offensive production.

Much of that is attributable to injuries to Heatley and Alfredsson, but it's also demonstrated the Senators lack scoring depth beyond their first line.

It was a weakness exploited by the Ducks in last year’s finals, one that the injuries to Heatley and Alfredsson clearly show remains a significant problem.

Because of these problems, the seemingly insurmountable lead the Senators had over the rest of the Conference a month ago has been whittled away.

The Montreal Canadiens, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, New Jersey Devils and NY Rangers are all now within striking distance of the Senators, with only 8 points separating first overall from seventh in the Conference as of this writing.

Sub-par goaltending, shoddy defensive play and the injuries to Heatley and Alfredsson are wearing down the Senators.

Heatley and Alfredsson should eventually return soon and there’s more than enough defensive talent on the Senators to overcome their uncharacteristically poor play. Still, rivals have taken note that shutting down the Sens first line and pressuring their defense with a swift offensive attack can be keys to success.

But it's the goaltending that's the most difficult problem to address. For all the talk of Gerber and Emery having to step up their respective performances, thus far they’ve failed to rise to the challenge, and in the case of Emery, he’s seemingly becoming more of a distraction with each passing week.

Disgruntled Senators fans can call for Emery's trade or demotion but the reality is neither is really an option. As more than one pundit has observed, there's really no suitable replacement for Emery either on the farm or via trade.

If Gerber and Emery fail to measure up, it really won't matter if the offense and defense improves, because the Achilles heel in goal will not only prevent the Senators from returning to the Cup finals but could put their dominance of the Conference at risk.

For the first time in a long time, the Senators are facing a potentially serious mid-season crisis, which if not soon addressed has the potential to put their season in jeopardy.

That’s a headline I never thought I’d type heading into this year’s playoffs, especially in a series against the Buffalo Sabres, and one I’m betting denizens of “Leafs Nation” never hoped to see.

I don’t mean that disparagingly, Senators fans, just being honest. After years of watching this team come up small in the playoff so often, it was an easy assumption to make going into the 2007 Stanley Cup playoffs.

But once the Sens got past the Penguins (yes, I picked the Pens to upset them) and after their strong showing against the New Jersey Devils, my opinion changed, leading to my at-the-time bold prediction that they’d upset the Sabres.

And this should be considered an upset, except that for most of this series, the Senators were the dominant team. This victory in five games over the Sabres was not a fluke, nor was it lucky. Ottawa deserved to win this series.

Their penalty killing was incredibly aggressive. They constantly forechecked and were responsible defensively. That defence corps is scary-deep, with guys who can move the puck well and chip in offensively (Redden, Corvo, Preissing) and those who can play a tough, physical defensive style (Volchenkov, Phillips, Schubert).

Volchenkov in particular has emerged as my personal favourite with his bone crushing hits and shot-blocking ability.  Anyone who still believes the myth of “weak Russian players” need only watch “the A-Train” to have their minds changed. This guy is the epitome of "old time hockey".

Ray Emery may not be winning many fans with his cockiness, but his play has given the Sens the confident goaltending they’ve lacked for years in the playoffs. When you're doing as well as he is, you can afford to be cocky.

Their best players were just that, their best players, particularly Daniel Alfredsson (my candidate to win the Conn Smythe Trophy), Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza, who were only shut out once in this year’s playoffs.

Alfredsson has been silencing his critics this spring by doing what a great captain does, leading his team to victory. Whether it's scoring or setting up goals, working the PP, killing penalties, blocking shots, or playing the body, "Alfie" has been unusually aggressive this spring, and it's made him Ottawa's best player in this year's playoffs.

Their secondary forwards, notables like Mike Fisher, Antoine Vermette, Chris Kelly, Dean McAmmond, Mike Comrie and Oleg Saprykin, have been tremendous in their work ethic and their two-way play.

The Senators were simply too good in the little things that win games.

It has to be heartbreaking for the Sabres and their fans. This was supposed to be “the year” when finally a championship would come to Buffalo, but it was obvious to me in their opening round series against the lowly New York Islanders that something was wrong with this club, that this year’s playoffs was going to be a hard road.

Ultimately, my concerns about the Sabres, which I expressed in earlier posts on this blog so I won’t waste time repeating myself, were justified.

Something was different about the Sabres this season compared to last year’s playoffs, when they came so agonizingly close to going to the Finals.  

Perhaps they put too much pressure upon themselves, or maybe not enough. Whatever the reason, they’re now heading into an off-season filled with as much uncertainty as there was a year ago.

Last summer, the casualties were Jay McKee, JP Dumont and Mike Grier. This year, it could be Daniel Briere, Chris Drury or perhaps a couple of other players will be dumped to free up salary to retain those two.

This unexpectedly short Eastern Conference Finals appearance will definitely influence the off-season plans of Sabres management.

They can make no excuses since they were simply beaten by a much better team, one that deserves to be in the Stanley Cup Finals. Hopefully, the Sabres have learned some valuable lessons from the Senators, lessons the Sens themselves took years to learn.

The Ottawa Senators deserve to be Eastern Conference Champions.

It may be premature to post this, but barring a miraculous comeback seen only twice in Stanley Cup playoffs history, the Buffalo Sabres won’t be advancing to the Finals as so many predicted they would.

Sure, at the start of the playoffs, I predicted the Sabres would get there, but ever since their first-round elimination of the NY Islanders, I thought they weren’t playing like a Cup contender. I caught some good-natured flak for this, but the Eastern Conference finals ultimately proved me right.

I’m not writing this post to gloat, but rather to point out that the Sabres have the potential to be a great team once they add a key ingredient: character.

That was something the Sabres had in last year’s playoffs, particularly when one by one their defensemen fell to the sidelines due to injury. With their backs to the wall in last year’s ECF, they came together as a team, showed incredible character, and came to within one period of advancing to the Stanley Cup Finals.

This year, perhaps weighed down by heightened expectations, perhaps believing their own press, perhaps believing talent alone would get them through, the Sabres weren’t the same playoff warriors they were a year ago.

Put simply, they lacked the character they had last spring.

Now folks will point to the Sabres woeful special team play in this year’s playoffs, especially in the ECF, or their inconsistent defensive game, or the struggles of their offensive game in the face of a determined defensive system throughout this year’s playoffs as the real culprit. All they need to do is address those problems and they’ll be a great team.

That’ll help, but ultimately without character, it won’t matter. Lack of character is why they've been unable to suitably address these problem areas. They're just not  yet willing to pay the price to elevate their game.

The Sabres and their fans need only look at the team that presently has them on the brink of elimination for a lesson in that.

For years the Senators were one of the top teams in the NHL, yet season after season came up short in the playoffs, usually beaten by teams with lesser talent or depth.

The reason why they became an annual spring joke, why they became known as choke artists, was because they lacked character. They weren’t willing individually and collectively to pay whatever price to take their game to the next level. They believed their talent was enough to get them through.

Talent helps, but as we’ve seen in playoff history, character is the ultimate measure of a winner.

The Detroit Red Wings used to be a team like that, too. In the early-to-mid 1990s they were, like the Senators, one of the best teams in the NHL, yet every spring they’d come up small in the playoffs. It got so bad that by 1996 folks were questioning Steve Yzerman’s leadership!

Of course, nobody does that now, and there’s a reason for it: the Wings finally learned the painful lesson that talent alone wasn’t enough, they needed character to win.

Today’s Senators remind me of those Red Wings teams. For years they came up short, getting so bad that earlier this season even the most faithful Sens fans were calling for team captain Daniel Alfredsson to be traded.

Nobody’s doing that now. “Alfie” and his teammates are playing like a team on a mission, and they, not the Sabres, look like true Cup contenders.

No doubt the Sabres have the talent,. Even if they end up losing either Chris Drury or Daniel Briere to free agency this summer (and I still think it’s possible they can keep both by dumping salary elsewhere, but that’s a topic for another day), they’re so deep in good young talent they should be a contender for years. The only thing preventing that from happening is the will of ownership to spend what’s needed to keep most of the core of the roster together.

But this team hasn’t learned yet that talent alone isn’t enough in the playoffs. To go to the next level, they need character.

Now if they rally from the almost insurmountable hole they’re currently in against Ottawa, that’ll be one of the greatest displays of character in Stanley Cup playoffs history.

But if not (and I don’t like their chances), they’re learning a valuable lesson, one that hopefully they’ll never forget, one that hopefully – unlike the 1990s Red Wings and the earlier versions of the Senators – they won’t need to keep relearning for years until it finally sinks in.