More than anything, it is the sign of a maturing team with growing confidence in its capabilities and game plan.

	Through the first three games, the Senators have let the Maple Leafs be the aggressors.

For while other NHL clubs this spring have been constantly appealing to officials for calls or demanding that calls not be made against them in the interests of "letting the teams play," the Ottawa Senators are just going about their business every night in rather non-flamboyant style, playing a brand of hockey that has all but eliminated their need to kill penalties because, well, they don't take many.

With eight games under their belts in these Stanley Cup playoffs, and Game 4 of their series against the Toronto Maple Leafs coming up tonight, the Senators have only had to face 23 enemy power plays this spring and, even better, have only allowed one power-play goal.

To put that in perspective, the Leafs have coughed up a stunning 14 power-play goals in the postseason. San Jose is about middle-of-the-pack, having given up five in eight games while eliminating Phoenix and jumping ahead of the defending champion Avalanche.

But the Sens have given up just one.

Against the Leafs, the Sens are a perfect 7-for-7 on the penalty kill, a big part of the reason they've taken two of the first three games of the series.

That's not a lot of work for the Ottawa penalty killers, and therein lies the story. In the middle of a playoff season that has included a certain degree of mayhem and violence, from Kyle McLaren's forearm shiver on Richard Zednik to Darcy Tucker's low-bridge on Mike Peca, the Senators have decided to play nice.

And it's working.

While earning only an average of 8.3 penalty minutes per night, the Sens have taken turn-the-other-cheek to a new level. Their giant defenseman, 6-foot-9 Zdeno Chara, has been knocking folks senseless all spring, but has accumulated only eight minutes in penalties.

Ditto for Chris Neil, who inherited the club's enforcer role when Andre Roy, a specialist in dumb penalty taking in playoffs gone by, was dumped to Tampa Bay. Neil has hit hard but generally has avoided wasting his energy in scrums and other phony shows of force.

Only Colorado is averaging fewer penalty minutes per game than Ottawa, and the comparison is instructive. It's one thing for a veteran-laden squad with a history of doing what it takes in the playoffs to enforce team discipline as a means to an end, it's quite another for a young team with no record of postseason success like the Sens to achieve that type of result.

And maybe it's catching. The Montreal Canadiens took just one minor penalty Tuesday night en route to a 2-1 overtime victory over the Carolina Hurricanes.

	The Prevailing Of Cooler Heads
	A game-by-game look at the Ottawa Senators' power-play and penalty-killing statistics through Game 3 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals:
	Vs. Flyers	PP	PK	Result
	Game 1	0-3	1-1	L, 1-0*
	Game 2	1-3	3-3	W, 3-0
	Game 3	1-6	3-3	W, 3-0
	Game 4	0-8	7-7	W, 3-0
	Game 5	2-4	1-2	W, 2-1
	Vs. Toronto
	Game 1	3-12	1-1	W, 5-0
	Game 2	0-3	4-4	L, 2-1*
	Game 3	0-2	2-2	W, 3-2
	Total	7-41	22-23
	* - overtime

What's truly interesting about Ottawa's heightened state of team discipline is that it has worked so very well against Philadelphia and Toronto, two clubs with lots of playoff experience and an understanding of the requirements for playoff competition.

The Flyers, who damaged themselves as much as the Sens did, created 24 Ottawa power plays in losing their first-round series in five games while getting only 16 themselves.

The Leafs, meanwhile, gave the Sens 12 power plays in Game 1 alone while Ottawa was forced to kill off only two penalties. The result? A 5-0 Sens victory.

In the past two games, the Leafs have improved their discipline substantially, but their inability to either get the Senators to commit more fouls or get the officials to call more Ottawa penalties has created enormous frustration on the Toronto bench.

In Game 3, players like Tucker, Shayne Corson, Tie Domi and Gary Roberts were constantly chirping at referees Brad Watson and Don Koharski. As the Sens asserted control, it really seemed very much as though the Leafs were looking for the zebras to bail them out, looking for power plays to counteract their inability to create offense in even-strength situations.

But while some teams use muscle and nasty stickwork to discourage enemy attacks, the Senators rely more on skating and mobility, not to mention Chara's enormous wingspan which forces most forwards to take the long way around.

Some, of course, see a nefarious side to Ottawa's style.

"Referees love the way the Senators play because there's never any trouble," said Hockey Night in Canada commentator Don Cherry. "Subconsciously, the referees reward them for that."

That possible, but the truth here seems to be that the Sens have learned from previous playoff failures, particularly first round setbacks to the Leafs the last two springs.

In those encounters, Ottawa's intent to prove their manhood and match Toronto's testosterone level was obvious, and it failed miserably mostly because it was too much of a departure in style and attitude.

	Cheese With That Whine?
	A game-by-game look at the Toronto Maple Leafs' power-play and penalty-killing statistics through Game 3 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals:
	Vs. Islanders	PP	PK	Result
	Game 1	0-4	3-4	W, 3-1
	Game 2	0-6	3-3	W, 2-0
	Game 3	0-8	5-9	L, 6-1
	Game 4	1-7	4-5	L, 4-3
	Game 5	2-8	5-7	W, 6-3
	Game 6	2-6	4-6	L, 5-3
	Game 7	0-4	3-4	W, 4-2
	Vs. Senators
	Game 1	0-1	9-12	L, 5-0
	Game 2	0-4	3-3	W, 3-2*
	Game 3	0-2	2-2	L, 3-2
	Total	5-50	41-55
	* - overtime

Perhaps Jacques Martin's club got over that desire by facing and defeating the brawny Flyers in Round 1. Against the Leafs in this round, they've clearly decided that restraint is a better approach than an eye-for-an-eye, and it's driving the Leafs to utter distraction.

That said, the Leafs went into this series with a well-earned reputation as arguably the NHL whiniest team, a club prepared to debate every call and non-call and willing to blow the tiniest issue into a Watergate-sized conspiracy.

Young referee Brad Watson is the latest object of Leaf ire after making a controversial penalty-shot call against the Leafs in the first round against the Islanders and then, in Game 3 Monday night, first kicking defenseman Aki Berg out of the game for a boarding infraction and later failing to call Ottawa forward Benoit Brunet for goaltender interference on what proved to be the winning goal in a 3-2 Ottawa triumph.

That Watson made the correct call in both instances is beside the point as far as the Leafs are concerned. These guys see a second shooter behind every grassy knoll and injustice around every corner.

It's started to work against them. While many teams would have anticipated a makeup call in their favor in the wake of the five-minute power play enjoyed by the Senators on the Berg expulsion in the second period, the Leafs didn't get another man-advantage opportunity the rest of the game.

Corson and Tucker, meanwhile, are often flattened and manhandled by opponents, but rarely does either player get a generous call. Having been cursed and berated by these two all season and all spring, not to mention fooled more than once by fraudulent dives by both athletes, it's as though the NHL's officiating staff isn't willing to give either player the slightest benefit of the doubt.

Philosophically, it's a very different approach than that taken by low-key Ottawa. Unless the Leafs can cut the discipline gap between themselves and their healthier, younger opponent by either behaving better themselves or enticing the Sens to start taking loads of foolish fouls, surviving this series looms as difficult verging on impossible.

Damien Cox is a columnist for the Toronto Star.