{"id":68887,"date":"2020-02-17T16:20:52","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T21:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonhockey.com\/?p=68887"},"modified":"2020-02-17T16:20:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T21:20:52","slug":"looking-back-at-the-career-of-ottawa-senators-chris-phillips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2020\/02\/17\/looking-back-at-the-career-of-ottawa-senators-chris-phillips\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back at the Career of Ottawa Senators Chris Phillips"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, the Ottawa Senators<\/a> will retire number four, worn by long-time Senator Chris Phillips<\/strong>.<\/a> He will join Frank Finnigan<\/a><\/strong>‘s number eight (he played for Ottawa from 1923-1937) and Daniel Alfredsson<\/strong><\/a>‘s number 11 in the rafters. Phillips played his entire 16-year career in Ottawa and is the franchise’s leader in games played with 1179 and is one of the best players in Senators’ history. His shutdown game helped Ottawa have some of their best ever seasons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Chris Phillips First Seasons<\/span><\/h2>\n

The Ottawa Senators picked Chris Phillips first overall in the 1996 NHL entry draft. He played one more year in junior before joining the Senators for the 1997-98 season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Phillips started his career just as Ottawa was rising as a team. In the 1998 playoffs, the Senators won their first playoff series in their modern history. By the 2000-01 season, Phillips was playing 20 minutes a night and soon formed a shutdown pairing with Zdeno Chara<\/a><\/strong>. Phillips stayed in a shutdown role for the rest of his career. <\/span>Ken Warren, an Ottawa based reporter for Postmedia, interviewed Phillips’s long-time teammate Chris Neil<\/a><\/strong> for an article<\/a> leading up to Phillips’s jersey retirement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s (Phillips) longevity and what he did for the organization against top lines,” Neil continues. “He became one of the NHL’s best shutdown guys, always playing against (Alex) Ovechkin and the other superstars.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2003<\/h3>\n

The brightest part of Phillips’s young career was his performance against the New Jersey Devils<\/a> in the 2003 Eastern Conference Finals. In game five, with the Senators facing elimination, rookie Jason Spezza<\/a><\/strong> tipped Phillips shot for the third goal of the game to lift the Senators to a 3-1 win. In game six, Phillips scored a rebound goal in overtime to force a game seven. However, Ottawa lost that game 3-2.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n