BUFFALO -- Lindy Ruff is worried the media may have roused a sleeping giant.
In the wake of the Sabres' 2-1 loss to Ottawa last night, Ruff gave credit to the media for the Senators' strong performance in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semi-final.
"I think the media woke them up by calling out different players with criticism," the Sabres coach told reporters at HSBC Arena.
But the Senators had plenty of motivation entering the game, considering Buffalo held a 3-0 advantage in the series.
The Senators might have been the only ones who didn't believe this series was over.
"We talked about a lot of things in this room," said Senators centre Mike Fisher. "But one of the things we talked about the most was the fact that we have to treat this as a four-game series. The first three games were gone and there's nothing we can do about them. We had to look forward.
"All we have to do is win four straight games," he added. "We won four straight games all the time during the season. We're going to approach this one game at a time because nobody here wants to be out of the playoffs. We all want to keep playing and we've got a great team here."
Captain Daniel Alfredsson echoed those sentiments.
"We still believe we can win this series," he said. "We played a strong game and we got everybody contributing.
"We know it's going to be tough and we know we're in a difficult situation. We've just got to make sure that we play for 60 minutes."
