ANAHEIM -- Ducks defenceman Scott Niedermayer isn't a big talker to start with, so it's no surprise he had little to say about a shot by Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson that hit him on Monday night in Game 4.
Alfredsson let go a slap shot from just inside the Ottawa side of the centre-ice red line as time ran out in the second period. It nailed Niedermayer at the Anaheim blue line.
A scrum ensued and it looked as if the Ducks thought Alfredsson fired the full slapper at Niedermayer on purpose.
"That really has nothing to do with trying to win a hockey game," Niedermayer said yesterday. "We are here to try and win a hockey game. It's as simple as that.
"You can probably figure out what I thought after it happened. (It) doesn't do any good to talk about it, really. I wasn't happy. No need to get hit with a puck at that point. I'm not going to say anything more than that."
But Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said yesterday the incident fired up his team.
"I know that definitely hit a chord with our hockey club," he said. "The thing that surprised me the most about it was that Scott Niedermayer took it upon himself to tell the team to just turn the page on it, and that is a leadership statement. He sensed we could be putting ourselves in jeopardy of losing our focus."
Alfredsson said he wasn't trying to hit Niedermayer after he carried the puck out of the Ottawa zone, wound up, stopped and then finally fired the puck.
"I wanted to shoot at the net first," he said. "I was trying to shoot the puck down the ice ... get rid of it. It was kind of caught in my feet."
Carlyle said his players won't forget what happened.
"I thought it was blatant," he said. "You could tell he directed it towards him because he changed the shooting angle halfway through his windup. People have long memories."
Countered Sens coach Bryan Murray: "Daniel Alfredsson doesn't do that. I'm not sure he did anything other than shoot the puck as we all do at the end of periods."
