Hammond, Stone help Senators clinch playoff berth

Andrew Hammond made 34 saves and fellow rookie Mark Stone scored twice to propel the Ottawa Senators to a Stanley Cup playoff berth Saturday afternoon with a 3-1 victory in Philadelphia.

Ottawa took the top wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference and will face the Atlantic Division champion Montreal Canadiens in the opening round.

For Hammond, the win was the 27-year-old rookie goaltender's 20th against one regulation loss and two overtime/shootout defeats since the Senators recalled him from their American Hockey League affiliate in mid-February.

Hammond finishes the regular season with a 10-0-2 record on the road.

"I've never had a stretch of hockey like this in my life," Hammond said. "It's something I don't think anyone can really explain."

Stone, a candidate for NHL rookie of the year honours, scored the game's opening goal at 6:06 of the first period to extend his points streak to nine games and completed the scoring with his 26th goal of the season in the third.

Jean-Gabriel Pageau added his 10th of the season and third in three games for Ottawa, which looked be a playoff longshot a few weeks ago until it started a 22-4-4 run to burst into the post-season.

Matt Read, with his eighth goal of the season, scored for the Flyers, who failed to play post-season spoiler and ended the season with a 33-31-18 mark.

Hammond, 27, entered the game with a 1.76 goals-against average in 23 games this season. Not bad for an undrafted rookie.

Ottawa fans have tossed hamburgers on the ice and the owner of six McDonald's locations in the Ottawa Valley arranged for Hammond to have a card that gives him free McDonald's food for life.

He led the Senators from 14 points out of a playoff spot on Feb. 10 to contention down the stretch.

The Senators mobbed him at the net when the final horn sounded.

"I don't know if it's completely sunk in yet," Hammond said, "but tomorrow when we wake up, we'll be in the playoffs. That's a really special feeling for this group from where we were."

The Flyers' absence from the playoffs for the second time in three seasons could cost head coach Craig Berube his job. Berube led the Flyers to the playoffs last season when he took over with the team off to an 0-3 start.

Berube was elevated from an assistant to the head job by former general manager Paul Holmgren. Ron Hextall, in his first season calling the shots, could go in a different direction with the Flyers set to have a top-10 draft lottery pick and a potential rebuild ahead.

Berube said he never thought the finale could be his final game on the bench.

"We've got some real good franchise players on his hockey team," Berube said. "The components are here."

Jakub Voracek and Claude Giroux both were in the mix most of the season for the league scoring title and Wayne Simmonds led the team in goals despite missing the final two weeks with a foot injury.

Simmonds hobbled on crutches and posed with fans in the press box during intermission, getting a bird's eye view of a team that never lived up to so much playoff potential.

The Flyers have not won a Stanley Cup since hoisting two straight in 1974 and 1975. The Flyers have been close — real close to another: Philadelphia lost in the Stanley Cup finals in 1976, 1980, 1985, 1987, 1997 and 2010.

The Flyers have missed the playoffs two times in a three-season span for the first time since they missed it five straight seasons from 1989-1994.