Stars’ Hogue Puts Oilers in a 2-1 Hole

Benoit Hogue could scarcely believe his good fortune. Edmonton Oilers defenseman Janne Niinimaa couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Niinimaa’s defensive lapse at 13:07 of overtime sent the puck into the hand of Hogue, who drilled a shot past Oiler goaltender Curtis Joseph for a 1-0 victory Monday night at Edmonton, Alberta.

The Stars lead the best-of-seven series, 2-1. Game 4 is scheduled for Wednesday at Edmonton.

“You don’t look for the fancy play in overtime,” said Hogue, who has become more of a checker than a scorer since going to Dallas two years ago from Toronto.

“If you get the shot, you take it and see what happens. I had a shot in the slot, I took it and it went in.”

Hogue said the hard-fought victory will go a long way in regaining the emotional edge in the series for Dallas, something Star Coach Ken Hitchcock said has been lacking on his team.

“We played on emotion all season and we’ve lacked that in the playoffs,” Hogue said. “It’s the emotion we have to get out there and I think this will be a big push for us.”

Stars goalie Ed Belfour made 28 saves for the shutout. Joseph, who shut out the Stars, 2-0, on Saturday, made 27.

Mike Modano nearly gave the Stars the lead with 13 minutes gone in the second when his low blast from outside the blue line fooled Joseph, but the puck rang off the post.

“A lot of people in Canada have us losing the series, they have us as the underdog,” said Modano, whose team was tops in the league with 109 points in the regular season compared to Edmonton’s 80 points.

“That’s fine with us. We know we haven’t proved anything the last couple of years. But we felt we’d get a game here.”

Ottawa 4, Washington 3--Daniel Alfredsson notched his second hat trick of the playoffs and the Senators scored three power-play goals at Kanata, Ontario.

The teams play again Wednesday night at the Corel Centre, where the Senators have not lost in four playoff games. The Capitals lead the the series, 2-1.

“They scored three power-play goals, and that was the difference,” Washington Coach Ron Wilson said. “We’ve got to do a better job of killing penalties. Every once in a while you’re not going to be perfect. It’s just one hockey game and we’ll put that aside. We’ve got to respond physically better.”

Alfredsson, who slammed his stick against the glass in frustration near the referee and was given a misconduct after Washington scored six goals on its last six shots of Saturday night’s 6-1 victory, scored all three of his goals in the first period. And they came against goalie Olaf Kolzig, who had stopped 292 of the 308 shots he had faced in eight previous playoff games.

The Senators knew they would have to control play early and did with some tough checks in the opening minutes as the home crowd roared its approval.

“We just had to go back to playing the kind of hockey we played all year,” Ottawa Coach Jacques Martin said.

Alfredsson, whose first hat trick gave the Senators a 4-3 victory over New Jersey in the first round, made it 2-0 at 8:17 when he redirected Randy Cunneyworth’s centering pass from behind the net past Kolzig.

Sergei Gonchar got Washington going with a similar goal, scoring on a power play midway through the period off a feed from Andrei Nikolishin. It was his fifth goal of the playoffs, tops among defensemen.

Alfredsson made it 3-1 with a deflection at 16:58.

Despite the surge, the Senators had to withstand some shaky goaltending throughout the game by Damian Rhodes, who gave up three goals on the first nine shots he faced and made it interesting until the final buzzer.