Canada will have a team in the NHL's Stanley Cup finals, and Ottawa will have a team compete for hockey's top prize for the first time in the game's modern era.
The Ottawa Senators defeated the Buffalo Sabres 3-2 in overtime on Saturday in Buffalo.
Sens captain Daniel Alfredsson beat Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller just inside the post with a low shot to the glove side at 9:32 into the first period of overtime, sending the NHL's best team over the regular season onto the golf course.
"I think we respect Buffalo as a team. I think they've had a hell of a year, but I think they ran into us at the wrong time," Alfredsson said after the game.
His goal shocked Buffalo's 18,690 fans at HSBC Arena into silence. In Kanata, thousands of excited fans on the patio outside ScotiaBank Place erupted. They waved trophy replicas and chanted, "Go Sens Go!" and "We want the Cup!"
The win gave the Senators the series in five games, with Sabres taking one Wednesday night in Ottawa. The Sens have a playoff record of 12-3 for their three series to date, having dispatched first the Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils.
If the Sens go on to win the championship, they will do what the Calgary Flames (2004) and Edmonton Oilers (2006) could not do -- return Lord Stanley's mug to Canadian soil.
Ottawa's mayor made a pitch for the country's support.
"Canada's team without a doubt. I ask everybody who's a hockey fan in Canada to get behind the Ottawa Senators," said Larry O'Brien.
The last Canadian team to win a Cup was the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. The last Ottawa team to win was the 1927 Ottawa Senators, who left in 1934 to become the St. Louis Blues. The current version was born as an expansion team in the 1992-93 season.
Although the Senators have yet to sip champagne from the Cup, Buffalo similarly has yet to win a championship in its 37-year history. The last Ontario team to win was the 1967 Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Senators will face either the Anaheim Mighty Ducks or Detroit Red Wings. Those two Western teams are in a 2-2 deadlock in their series, with Game 5 going Sunday afternoon in Detroit.
The celebrations
Police were out in force on Ottawa's Elgin Street bar strip, but they had smiles on their faces too.
As carousing, high-fiving fans rolled by, one officer had this response to questions about potential trouble: "Are you kidding? We'll see what happens in the wee hours when people have finished drinking."
Among the revellers partying was Senator Jim Munson, who ended up dancing awkwardly but enthusiastically in the streets.
"Never in my life have I been so proud to be an Ottawa senator," the golf-shirt-and-shorts-clad legislator told people used to seeing him in the chamber of sober second thought.
Hundreds of fans went out to the city's airport to welcome back their heroes, who took a quick flight out of Buffalo to return home.
Many of the players rolled down their vehicles' darkened windows to smile and wave at the gauntlet of fans as they left the airport grounds.
With a report from CTV's Graham Richardson and files from The Canadian Press
