'It is what it is,' Karlsson says of empty seats in Ottawa

Erik Karlsson wasn't going to lie.

He noticed the empty seats at Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa on Thursday when the Senators opened their second-round series against the New York Rangers with a 2-1 win.

The captain and game-winning scorer had a more diplomatic response for what the empty seats meant.

"It is what it is, but I feel we have great support in this city" Karlsson said, according to NHL.com's Dan Rosen. "We have great fans."

The guy's obviously not going to throw his supporters under the bus in the playoffs, but the building was at 90.5 percent capacity Thursday with almost 2,000 seats still available, and that fact has almost overshadowed the Senators taking a 1-0 lead over New York, despite the Rangers being favored in the series.

In fact, Karlsson said Thursday's game was the best the Senators have played during the postseason, Rosen added.

That a full house didn't get to see it is the talk of Ottawa on Friday.

The Ottawa Sun's Wayne Scanlan published a column about it, with the usual arguments: The CTC is in Kanata, far from downtown Ottawa; parking is a real pain in the you know what; weeknight games are always a tougher sell, playoffs or not; and prices are, as expected, higher in the postseason.

Still, with Ottawa in the second round for only the second time since their Cup Final run in 2007, nothing less than full capacity will do, apparently. It's Canada, after all.