This one looked over.

The Ottawa Senators were staring a three-game deficit right in the face, down a goal with 90 seconds to go. Then, to make matters worse, Erik Karlsson took a slashing penalty, putting them down a man as well. But the Senators refused to go away, and a minute into the penalty, Daniel Alfredsson sneaked into the Pittsburgh zone, unmarked, and Milan Michalek found him in front of the net. Alfy sealed the deal, as Alfies often do, ending Tomas Vokoun's shutout bid and sending the game into overtimes.

Yes, overtimes. For the first time in the 2013 postseason, it took double OT for this game to produce a winner, and when it did, the Senators were back in the series. At 7:39 of the second overtime, Colin Greening banged home a loose puck to give the Sens a 2-1 victory:

And with that, the legend of the pesky Sens lives on. This team just won't go away. Pittsburgh will be left to wonder if it was their brutally lackadaisical approach to the powerplay late in regulation that cost them the lead, or destiny.

(Probably the former. But the latter makes for a nice narrative, no?)

Even after tying the game up in miraculous fashion, the Senators were nearly dealt the fatal blow numerous times. Pascal Dupuis hit a post in the first overtime. Evgeni Malkin had several terrifying forays into the Senators' end. They even survived another Pittsburgh powerplay in OT number two.

Alfredsson and Greening will get much of the credit for stealing Game 3 -- which is sort of what happens when you get your name on the scoresheet after the 59th minute -- but Craig Anderson was a deserving first star after keeping the game within stealing distance all night. The Senators' netminder stopped 49 of 50 shots in the win.

How close were the Senators to the end? After the game, Greening -- who took a high-stick in the second and was late to the postgame scrum because doctors had to extract the fiberglass that had been sitting in his face for two and a half periods -- looked like he'd just come from Dexter's kill table.

You can't get much closer to death than that. Not many people survive the blood slide moment.

Game 4 goes Wednesday in Ottawa.

Patrice Bergeron streaked into the Rangers' zone, going wide on his man and down the wall. As he neared the goal line, he threw the puck towards the crease, where Dan Girardi was unable to get a stick on it and, much to his chagrin, Brad Marchand was. The smallish winger with the nose for the net redirected it past Henrik Lundqvist for the score.

That's not the Game 1 overtime winner I'm describing, though the similarities are striking. It was the fourth goal in Boston's decisive, 5-2, Game 2 victory over the New York Rangers.

The retread of the Marchand-Bergeron connection aside, these games weren't all that similar. Game 1 was close -- so close it needed extra time; Game 2 was over well before the end of regulation.

Johnny Boychuk scored the eventual game-winner at 12:08 of the second period after Brad Marchand handed him the puck at the top of the zone and the Rangers handed him all the time in the world. He beat Henrik Lundqvist with a laser.

The Rangers' comeback hopes took a major hit just 26 seconds into the final frame, as Marchand and Bergeron hooked up for the goal described above (and showcased below):

The return home for Game 3 will give the Ottawa Senators a little bit of a boost as they attempt get back into their second-round series with the Pittsburgh Penguins, but with a 3-0 hole looming, the club would no doubt welcome a boost to their boost.

It looks like they'll get one of those too. After undergoing surgery for a herniated disc in his back and missing the last four months, Jason Spezza has been medically cleared to play.

He'll be in the Senators' lineup for Game 3. (Double boost!)

"I'm excited to have a chance to play again," Spezza said. "I feel ready to play."

Where he'll play remains to be seen, but Spezza has practiced on the Senators' first line alongside frequent running mate Milan Michalek, so our educated guess would be there.

That makes sense. Down 0-2, the Senators really aren't in a position to ease him into the lineup. Still, the question is what sort of impact he'll be able to have in his first game in 4 months. There's a good chance he'll see a lot of Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, the latter of whom notched a hat trick in Game 2. These are matchups he needs to win, and that's a lot to ask of anyone, let alone a guy that's played just 5 games this season.

But it's not like Spezza's not capable of it. His last game with the Senators was versus these very Penguins, and while Ottawa lost the decision, 2-1, in a shootout, Spezza was a large part of the reason they came away from that one with a point, finishing well above water in his head-to-head matchups with both of the Penguins' star pivots, and assisting on Ottawa's game-tying goal.

Spezza played the majority of this game matched up with Evgeni Malkin, while Kyle Turris saw the Crosby matchup (as he has for Games 1 and 2, and I'd expect he will in Game 3, Crosby's hat trick notwithstanding).

But when Spezza didn't see Malkin, he saw Crosby, and despite playing the majority of the night versus two of the best centres in the Eastern Conference, Spezza finished the evening with an even-strength Corsi rate (plus/minus for shots attempted, basically) of plus-9. Crosby was a minus-9. Malkin was a minus-6.

Spezza, who is a much better two-way player now than he was the last time the Senators and the Penguins met in the playoffs, also won 11 of 16 faceoffs versus this duo in that game.

If the Senators can return a guy capable of winning these pivotal shifts, their chances of staging a comeback in this series increase exponentially. But after four months on the shelf, one wonders if Spezza can be the player he's capable of being right away.

Game 3 goes Sunday. It totally should have been Saturday, though, which is the 10-year anniversary of Spezza's original playoff debut. That would have been cool.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say the Ottawa Senators outplayed the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 1 -- it's tough to argue that when they lost by three goals -- the club from Canada's capital did a lot right in the series opener.

They controlled the run of the play for long stretches. They matched the Penguins in goal-scoring output. They pushed the Penguins back with their speed, even making Pittsburgh's trio of big-name deadline acquisitions -- Jarome Iginla, Douglas Murray, and Brenden Morrow -- look slow, as all three saw the ice tilt away from them when they were on it.

But that was at even-strength. Special teams, on the other hand, were a nightmare.

Up and down a man, this was Pittsburgh's game. The Penguins scored two powerplay goals and a shorthanded goal, and that was the difference, quite literally, in a 4-1 Senators loss in in Game 1.

"They have the best power play in the playoffs and you try not to give them those opportunities," Cory Conacher told the Sun after the game. "You want to play hard, physical and you just want to be a little bit smarter."

Smarter would be making sure that Pittsburgh's cavalcade of incredible players isn't gifted any extra space. This team can ice a powerplay consisting of five all-stars. The Senators cannot ice a penalty-kill of similar pedigree. So now you're talking about five all-stars versus four normal guys. Sorry, four normal guys, but my money's on the all-stars.

A little over a year ago, the above photo of Darth Maul on ice made the rounds at Reddit Hockey.

Sadly, it was a Photoshop. While we imagine the real Darth Maul would indeed play hockey with a double-bladed stick, just like he fights Jedi with a double-edged lightsaber (or saberstaff, as it's formally known), the Darth Maul from the photo, which was taken during a Tampa Bay Lighting/San Jose Sharks game, was just carrying a regular one.

The double-bladed stick was just a fiction.

That is, until the AHL's Grand Rapids Griffins, inspired by the image, set to making the Frankenstick a reality. And, once they had, they did the only reasonable thing you can do with such a creation: They gave it to stickhandling wizard and viral video machine Tomas Jurco:

Other members of the Griffins have some nice moments with it. Willie Coetzee earns our respect for recognizing the Stars Wars influence. Triston Grant wisely suggests it needs two different curves to really be an all-situation piece of equipment.

But the magic happens once Jurco has it and begins juggling the puck while twirling it like a baton. It's pretty neat -- at least up until he breaks it because it won't do what he wanted it to.

How does he break it? With a routine slapshot, because, as unique as it may be, it remains a composite hockey stick.

Follow Harrison Mooney on Twitter at @HarrisonMooney

No. 1 Star: Brad Marchand, Boston Bruins

The Bruins struck first, edging the New York Rangers 3-2 in overtime of Game 1. Marchand scored the winner, and added an assist on Torey Krug's powerplay goal to tie the game early in the third period.

No. 2 Star: Drew Doughty, Los Angeles Kings

Doughty scored the Kings' second goal and was on the ice for the late powerplay marker that tied the game in their 4-3 comeback win over the San Jose Sharks. He was also the best skater on the ice for nearly half the game, leading all skaters with 28:28 of icetime.

The Los Angeles Kings won their sixth straight Thursday, shocking the San Jose Sharks with two goals 22 seconds apart -- in the final two minutes, no less -- to turn a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 victory in Game 2.

Right up until the last 120 seconds of this one, the story was the San Jose Sharks and their impressive comeback. After going down two goals early in the second, San Jose refused to quit, storming back taking their first lead of the night midway through the third.

But then, 139 seconds from returning to San Jose with the series knotted at one, Marc-Edouard Vlasic turned a 5-on-4 penalty-kill situation into a 5-on-3 by putting the puck over the glass.

It was inadvertent -- they always are with this stupid penalty -- but there was no arguing the infuriating rule, and Vlasic was forced to watch his team's fortunes turn on a dime from the penalty box.

When he went in, the Sharks were up by a goal. He was released 58 seconds later, his team now down by a goal. All an incredulous, dismayed Vlasic could do was laugh.

The last time we saw the Boston Bruins, they came back from a third-period deficit and won a big game in overtime.

They have not forgotten how to do this. Brad Marchand was the hero Thursday night in Game 1 of Round 2, scoring the OT winner after 15:40 of bonus hockey.

It was the first goal of the postseason for the little guy with the big heart and even bigger nose.

That's Patrice Bergeron with the game-winning assist, as if you had to ask. If clutch were a real thing, he'd be the clutchest guy around. Bergeron was a force all through Game 1, winning 14 of 18 faceoffs, and playing 27 minutes, second on the Bruins to Zdeno Chara's absurd 38:02.

Henrik Lundqvist deserved better for the Rangers. He was outstanding, making 48 saves in the loss. 16 of those saves came in overtime, as the Bruins pressed all through the extra frame for the winner, and 7 of those 16 came on a dangerous-looking powerplay with Derek Dorsett in the box for interference.

"I thought it was pretty even going into overtime, but we got spanked in overtime," said John Tortorella. Fortunately, Lundqvist stood tall.

Ironically, it was the players most incapable of standing tall that did him in. After the Rangers took the lead just 14 seconds into the third period, rookie Torey Krug -- all 5'9" of him -- scored his first NHL goal to tie things up two and a half minutes later.

And in overtime, Lundqvist did his best to get over and stop Marchand on Bergeron's centring pass, but Marchand found a gap as the Rangers' netminder came across, sliding the puck through to end Game 1.

Game 2 goes Sunday.