OTTAWA — If the Grinders make the playoffs, they may look back on the final week of the season and point to the moment everything could have fallen apart.

Instead, it became the moment that defined them.

With starting goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood unavailable after collapsing from exhaustion, and still yet to correctly recall his wifes name, (He actually unknowingly reached the league’s maximum games limit) the Grinders were forced to turn to Joey Daccord — a backup who had played sparingly throughout the season — just as their playoff hopes hung in the balance.

What followed may have saved their season.

Daccord has gone 4-0-1 in his last five starts, backstopping Ottawa through its most critical stretch of the year and helping the team claw its way into the final playoff position in the Canadian Conference. With one game remaining, the Grinders sit at 96 points, just one ahead of Copper Cliff.

One point.

One game.

And now, one goaltender.

The timing could not be more dramatic. While Ottawa prepares to face 11th-place Toronto in its regular-season finale, Copper Cliff — sitting just behind them with 95 points — draws last-place Vancouver, a matchup that on paper heavily favors their pursuit.

The Grinders cannot count on help.

They will need to earn it themselves.

And they will do so behind the same goaltender who has grinded away in the shadows all season, waiting for his opportunity to be the difference maker.

It’s a fitting twist for a team that has made a habit of defying expectations all season long.

From the outset, Ottawa was not considered a playoff team. Their roster lacked the high-end star power of the conference’s elite teams, and their underlying numbers never suggested dominance. Even now, their +5 goal differential is the lowest among playoff-positioned teams.

They were never supposed to be here.

Yet here they are.

Much of the credit belongs to rookie sensation Macklin Celebrini, whose 36 goals and 72 points have driven the offense and established him as the clear-cut top rookie in the league. Night after night, Celebrini has provided the spark that Ottawa needed — the kind of production that turns close games into wins.

But this story has never been about just one player.

Bo Horvat, Nick Schmaltz, Thomas Chabot, and Ridly Greig have all played key roles, while the team’s depth has consistently delivered in key moments. And for much of the season, Blackwood provided the stability in net that allowed Ottawa to stay competitive.

Now, in the most important game of the year, that responsibility belongs to Daccord.

It’s a scenario few could have predicted: a team that has scraped and clawed its way through the standings, now entrusting its season to a goaltender who wasn’t expected to carry the load.

But if the last five games are any indication, the Grinders wouldn’t have it any other way.

They have made a season out of proving people wrong.

One final game remains.

Win, and the Grinders complete one of the most unlikely playoff runs in the league.

Lose, and they risk watching it slip away — potentially overtaken by a Copper Cliff team with a far easier path on paper.

Either way, the story is already written.

The Grinders were not supposed to be here.

And yet, with their season on the line, they are still standing.

By Claude McGyver, Hellcats beat writer for The Athletic

COLOGNE — Three days ago, this paper asked whether the Cologne Hellcats' second period in Stuttgart was the start of something sustainable, or the right night colliding with the right opponent. Sunday night at MühlenArena am Dom delivered what looks, increasingly, like the answer.

The Lansing Lynx — a team currently outside the World Conference playoff line — walked into Cologne, outshot the home side 33-16, and won 3-1. Filip Forsberg's late power-play goal in the third was the only Hellcats marker. Without it, the home side would have been shut out by a team they had every reason to beat.

Sixteen shots. At home. Against a club chasing the playoff cutline from below.

That number is the story. The Hellcats took 21 shots at home against the worst team in the league nine days ago and were rescued by Arvid Soderblom. They have now taken 16 shots at home against another non-playoff team and could not be rescued by anyone. The Stuttgart eruption — four goals in a single second period — looks, in this light, less like a return to form than a single bright night against an opponent willing to let them play.

Forsberg's return was supposed to be the structural answer. He has now played two games since coming back. In one of them, his presence helped open space for a four-goal explosion. In the other, his power-play tip was the only thing keeping his team from being shut out at home by a team most of the league has already left behind. One player, by himself, cannot generate offence. He needs the other twelve forwards to want it. On Sunday, they did not.

"That's not good enough from us," the head coach said postgame. "Sixteen shots at home. That's on everyone in this room."

He is right, but the more pointed version of that statement is the one nobody in the building wants to say out loud: this is not new. This is the team Cologne has been for most of three weeks, and one good period in Stuttgart did not change it.

The standings now reflect what the play has been suggesting. Cologne sits at 99 points, tied with Halifax, holding second in the World Conference by tiebreaker. First place is gone again. The chase pack is no longer chasing — it has arrived. And the Hellcats' 3-7-0-0 record over their last ten games is the worst stretch of any team currently inside the conference playoff picture.

Three games remain. None of them will be against the league's worst team. Whatever Cologne is going to be in the playoffs that begin in two weeks, they are going to have to find it now — and Sunday night was not a step toward finding it.

The Stuttgart performance was the exception. Everything before it, and everything since, has been the rule.

By Claude McGyver, Hellcats beat writer for The Athletic

COLOGNE — For nine minutes in Stuttgart on Wednesday night, the Cologne Hellcats stopped being the team they have been for the last fortnight and started looking, again, like the team they were supposed to be all along.

Three goals in roughly two minutes. Four in the period. A 0-0 game became 4-0 before Stuttgart had time to find the bench door, and a Hellcats team that, a week ago, took a single shot in the first period against the league's worst club was suddenly burying chances against one of its best.

The result — 5-2 on the road, against the team that handed them their sixth straight loss two weeks ago — was the most convincing single performance of the season's late stretch. Whether it was the start of something sustainable or simply the right night colliding with the right opponent is still an open question. But for the first time since the skid began, the answer to that question is genuinely interesting.

The bunching, finally, on the right side

The defining pattern of Cologne's collapse was clusters of goals against. Thirty-three seconds apart against St. Jerome. Twenty seconds apart against Stuttgart at home. Thirteen seconds apart in the rematch. Whatever the Hellcats were doing through their six-game slide, the most consistent feature of it was an inability to absorb a punch — the moment a game tilted, more goals followed almost immediately.

On Wednesday, the bunching landed on the other end of the ice. Mika Zibanejad opened the second at 10:10. Marcus Johansson made it 3-0 at 11:42. Parker Kelly buried a shorthanded goal at 12:05. Three goals in just under two minutes — the same fingerprint that has been used against Cologne all month, finally being used by Cologne.

That is not an accident of one night. The Hellcats have been a team capable of bursts like this all season. What changed is that they finally produced one on a night that mattered, in the period where they had been getting buried.

Forsberg makes the structure work

The clearest structural change had a name pinned to a stall. Filip Forsberg returned to the lineup for the first time in nearly three weeks and immediately picked up an assist on the Zibanejad goal that broke the game open.

It is too early to credit one player for one period. But the structural argument that has run through coverage of the skid — that balanced lines without a top-line anchor diluted the team's identity — was, at minimum, no longer being tested. With Forsberg back, the lines settle. With the lines settled, roles get clearer, and a coaching staff that has spent two weeks improvising can finally coach the team it built.

The first evidence of that is one period of hockey. The next four games are how we find out whether it was the lineup or the moment.

The Werenski inversion

There was one beat that, taken on its own, was almost too perfect.

Two weeks ago, Zach Werenski took the trip on Kirill Kaprizov that gave Sundsvall a power play 2:29 into a game they would win. The Dragons scored on the resulting man advantage. That penalty became the symbolic moment of the season's discipline collapse — the veteran whose mistake gave the opponent the moment.

On Wednesday, Werenski took another minor. This time, Cologne scored shorthanded. Parker Kelly's goal at 12:05 came moments after Werenski was whistled, and it broke whatever pushback Stuttgart had been trying to manufacture.

"I take the penalty, that's on me," Werenski said afterward. "The guys bailed me out the other way tonight. That hasn't been the case much lately."

The same player. The same situation. The opposite result. If a single shift can tell you a team has begun to find its game, that one came close.

Caveats remain

The standings now read kindly. Cologne sits at 99 points, four clear of the Mustangs — who are on their own three-game winning streak — and back to a comfortable hold on first in the World Conference. Three wins in a row, including a road win in Stuttgart, buys a team some peace.

It does not erase the 3-7-0-0 stretch that preceded it. The underlying form remains, as the math says, mediocre. One brilliant period in a hostile building is genuinely the first encouraging evidence of recovery — but it is also still one period. The Hellcats have not played a complete, dominant 60 minutes against a contender in over three weeks.

Sebastian Horn stood at a podium last week and said he was watching a team that could not win in March. On Wednesday his team won in a way that was unmistakably his team. Whether that becomes a turning point or simply a good night sandwiched between bad ones is the question the next four games will answer.

Friday brings the Lynx, and another opportunity to make Wednesday's second period look less like an outlier and more like a return.

By Claude McGyver, Hellcats beat writer for The Athletic

COLOGNE — Twelve hours after their general manager publicly asked whether the group can still win, the Hellcats produced the kind of evidence that should worry Sebastian Horn more than yesterday did.

They beat the Vancouver Stompers 2-1 in a shootout on Monday night. They got their hold on first place back. At 97 points, with the streak over and the chase pack briefly held off, the surface reading is exactly what the team needed.

Under the surface: against the worst team in the UHL, in their own building, the Hellcats took one shot in the entire first period. Robert Thomas scored it eight seconds in. They did not generate another for the rest of the frame, and were outshot 10-1 in the opening twenty minutes. They finished the night outshot 28-21 by Vancouver. The worst team in the league put more pucks on net at MühlenArena am Dom than the home side did.

The reason Cologne got two points has a name, and it is Soderblom. He stopped 27 of 28 in regulation and overtime. He stopped all three shootout attempts. He was, in every measurable sense, the only thing on the home side that worked.

Everything else Horn named from the podium that morning was still there. Dougie Hamilton took three minor penalties. The Hellcats failed to generate offence against the league's bottom team. They failed to protect a lead. They were rescued, again, by a goaltender — this time the backup, getting his first start in five games.

"Tonight wasn't the answer," Zach Werenski said postgame. "Tonight was a result."

He was being generous. A win against Vancouver on one shot in the first period is not a result. It is a warning dressed up as one.

Five games left. The standings still say first. The hockey says something else entirely.

By Claude McGyver, Hellcats beat writer for The Athletic

COLOGNE — A week ago, Sebastian Horn told this paper he didn't have a speech for what was happening to his hockey team. On Wednesday morning, in front of a gathered media corps at the Hellcats' practice facility, he revealed he had been writing one.

Ten minutes had been scheduled. No players were present. The team's communications staff had confirmed in advance that questions would not be taken. Horn arrived alone, set a thin black folder on the podium, opened it without looking up, and began reading from notes that had clearly been worked over more than once.

What followed was the most pointed public statement of his tenure as general manager — controlled, surgical, and devastating in its precision.

"For parts of this season, this team has been the best team in the league," Horn began. "Three weeks ago, we were first in the World Conference. Yesterday, we lost our hold on first place in both our division and the conference, on the same night. That was not done to us. We did it ourselves. I want that on the record before anything else is said in this room."

He let the line sit for a moment before moving on.

That was beat one — the math, stated cold. The Hellcats spent significant stretches of the regular season as the consensus best team in the entire UHL. They are now second in the European division and second in the conference, with Stuttgart two points back and climbing. The fall from the top of the league to the top of nothing has happened in the span of nine days.

Horn moved next to the patterns.

"This losing streak has had more than one shape," he said. "Some nights we have been outplayed. Others, we have been undisciplined. Last night, we gave Stuttgart two goals in 13 seconds. The common thread, across all six, is that we have been the team handing our opponents the moment. Six different games. Six versions of the same problem."

It was the diagnosis the coaching staff has, for understandable reasons, avoided stating quite so directly in public. The Sundsvall game was a discipline issue — seven minor penalties to one. The Stuttgart game on Tuesday was a collapse, two goals in 13 seconds of the second period. Earlier in the skid it was lead protection. Earlier still, it was an 8-1 evisceration. Horn refused to let any of them be filed away as one-offs. They are, in his telling, the same failure wearing different costumes.

Then came the leadership beat — and the room understood immediately what it was hearing.

"There are veterans in that dressing room who have played in this league for many years," Horn said. "They know what is required when a team is in this position. I am not going to spell out what that looks like at a microphone. They know who they are. They know what I am referring to."

He did not name names. He did not need to. Every fan in Cologne could fill in the blanks. So could every player in the dressing room.

And then the climax — the beat that will be replayed for as long as this season is remembered.

"I have believed in this group for a long time." Horn's voice tightened here, the only point in the statement where the control showed any seam. "I have kept them together when other general managers in my position would not have. I have added to them rather than break them up. If it turns out this is not a group that can win, the approach that kept them together is going to have to change."

He paused.

"I built a team to win in May. I am watching a team that cannot win in March."

That was the last sentence. Horn closed the folder. He did not look up. The team's communications coordinator stepped to the podium and confirmed, for the record, that no questions would be taken. Horn walked off without acknowledging the room.

Ten minutes. Four beats. One sentence that will, by the end of the week, be on every back page from Cologne to Vancouver.

What Horn has done is something general managers in this league rarely do in public. He has placed the weight of the season's collapse on the players in the dressing room while implicating his own roster philosophy in the same breath. The veterans he has protected for years are the veterans he just challenged from a podium. The group he has kept together is the group he has now told, on the record, may not be the right one.

Six games remain in the regular season. Cologne sits second in both the European division and the World Conference, still firmly in a playoff position — but Stuttgart is two points back and surging, the loss column is climbing, and the man who runs the franchise has decided that the time for measured public messaging is over.

He had a speech this time. The room listened.

Now they have to play.