The Ottawa Senators continue their four game road trip with a stop in the Mile High city to take on the Colorado Avalanche.
The road trip didn’t exactly get off to a great start for the Senators. Ottawa put in a pretty good effort in Philadelphia on Tuesday but for a team desperate for a winning streak, banking the loser point isn’t going to cut it.
There are no easy games in this league but there are winnable ones. Tonight’s game in Colorado and Saturday in Arizona would certainly qualify.
Colorado has been a disappointment this season although their demise was long predicted by the analytics community. Despite having a forward group full of young talent, this Avs team was regularly outshot last season but survived thanks to some great goaltending from Semyon Varlamov. He has stumbled a bit this year and not surprisingly, the Avs have fallen back to earth a little bit. Their 16-16-8 record has them seven points back of the final playoff spot in the West.
They have been a little better lately though, posting a 6-3-1 record in their last ten games. Although again, a lot of that has to do with Varlamov. He stopped 54 shots in a shutout win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday night.
There was talk before this game that Curtis Lazar would rejoin the lineup but based on the morning skate, that does not appear to be the case. Cameron said he was 90% sure that Lazar would play in this game but I guess they decided a couple extra days rest would be a good idea. It will be interesting to see how much ice time that fourth line gets because Cameron has made it pretty clear he hasn’t liked the play of Colin Greening or David Legwand.
Apparently there was a lot of mixing and matching with the defence pairs during the game day skate and then afterwards, Cameron indicated that Marc Methot will return to the line up. No word on who comes out just yet.
MacArthur-Turris-Stone
Hoffman-Zibanejad-Ryan
Michalek-Pageau-Chiasson
Greening-Legwand-Condra
Methot-Karlsson
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Wiercioch/Phillips-Gryba
Craig Anderson gets the start in the Ottawa goal. Puck drop is scheduled for just after 9:00 PM.
