It’s a first: Ottawa reaches Stanley Cup finals

BUFFALO, N.Y. —  Leave it to Daniel Alfredsson -- the Ottawa Senators’ captain and longest-serving player -- to score the most important goal in team history.

With one clutch shot at 9:32 of overtime, Alfredsson ended a decade’s worth of frustration by sending the Senators to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time.

His goal secured a 3-2 win over the top-seeded Buffalo Sabres on Saturday, allowing Ottawa to win the Eastern Conference finals in five games.

No one needed to remind Alfredsson that he was the only one to have played in Ottawa’s 94 playoff games over 10 consecutive years, or that it took that long for the Senators to finally shed their reputation as postseason underachievers.

“It’s kind of surreal right now,” Alfredsson said. “We worked very hard for this, but you never take anything for granted. We respect Buffalo as a team.... But I think they ran into us at the wrong time.”

The Senators improved to an NHL-best 12-3 this postseason and have yet to lose two games in any series after eliminating New Jersey and Pittsburgh in five games in the first two rounds.

Sweetest of all, perhaps, for Ottawa was that it had been eliminated by Buffalo in three previous playoff meetings.

“What else can you say about Alfie?” forward Jason Spezza said. “He’s been our leader the whole time. It’s only fitting he scores that winner.”

It came on what began as an innocent-looking play, in which Alfredsson accepted Dany Heatley’s pass on the fly and broke into the Sabres’ zone on a one-on-three rush.

Using Buffalo defenseman Brian Campbell as a screen, Alfredsson shot and the puck tipped off Campbell’s stick and slipped just inside the right post.

“It surprised the heck out of me,” Sabres goalie Ryan Miller said, referring to Alfredsson’s goal. “He kind of hung me out. I didn’t get a real good look and obviously, I came up missing it.”

Ottawa will now wait to play the Ducks or the Detroit Red Wings. Their Western Conference final series is tied at 2-2.