See, all it took was two and a half hours of slapping around the incompetent Toronto Maple Leafs to, perhaps, salvage a year.
Ottawa isn't Nottawa after all. It shall remain a place that steals your money, can't support a football team and still looks to be home to a playoff-bound hockey squad.
A much-needed win in Toronto last night called off the vultures, historians and possibly even a priest for the Ottawa Senators but life can't be all that comfortable these days. Not with that collar tightening.
Now, far be it for me to call these past few months a choke job, but let's just say the Heimlich maneuver may be a required part of the rigorous two a days when training camp opens this coming fall.
Surely this isn't something that will be embraced in Bytown, but if the Sens inexplicitly miss the playoffs, this one may go down as the biggest choke job - ever - in pro sports. Period.
Hyperbole, you think? Well, ask Jean Van de Velde, Bill Buckner or Greg Norman if these little snafus tend to follow you around for a few years.
Back in November, there was plenty of talk that the Senators, who came out of the chute at 15-2, may flirt with history. For a few brief, alcohol-induced moments, there was talk the Senators might challenge the record-low eight losses put up by the '76-77 Canadiens.
Well, the good news is the Sens still may still go down in history. The bad news is it would be for all the wrong reasons.
Think of collapses that rank up there with this meltdown-in-waiting. The 2004 Yankees in the ALCS? Mickelson at the U.S. Open a couple of summer back? Mitch Williams in the '93 World Series?
Do you cringe mentioning the '08 Senators in the same sentence? Didn't think so.
Halfway through the season, the Senators had racked 58 points and a nine-point lead over Jersey atop the Eastern Conference. The Montreal Canadiens were playing for, at best, second in the Northeast and missing the playoffs was nothing more than a bad dream for the Senators.
Welcome to your nightmare, Ottawa.
Now would be a pretty good time to wake up.
There is still a chance to halt infamy.