With their captain gone, their three leading scorers traded, their best defenceman injured, their starting goalie on the bench, that pesky downtown arena distraction eliminated and the Head Coach fired, it looks like the Ottawa Senators are finally starting to turn the corner a little bit.
Rebuilds are easy. As long as you have Brian Gibbons on your side.
The Ottawa Senators, winners of consecutive hockey games if you can believe it, are back at it when they visit the Vancouver Canucks.
This one certainly won’t come as easy as it did on Saturday against the lowly Toronto Maple Leafs. Might have to actually try if they want to win tonight.
The Canucks are just as hot as Ottawa (they have also won two games in a row) and their line up features one of the best young players in the game.
And while we’re on that topic, does nobody else find it weird that the same time the Sedins “retire”, suddenly a new Swedish superstar is setting the league on fire with Vancouver Canucks? While I don’t entirely know the science behind it, I’m quite convinced that they have mashed Daniel and Henrik together into some sort of Swedish hockey-playing cyborg.
And the Senators might want to keep an eye on that robot because last time these two teams played, that Daniel/Henrik mash-up had his first career hat trick.
Not to get ahead of myself but allow me to get ahead of myself.
With a win tonight over the Canucks, the 31st place Ottawa Senators would no longer be the 31st place Ottawa Senators. Biggest game of the year? Certainly the biggest game of the week, anyway.
We’ll have to wait until the morning er afternoon skate to find out who plays with who tonight. A best guess at the line up based on yesterday’s practice
Tkachuk-Pageau-Veronneau
Duclair-Gibbons-Boedker
Balcers-Tierney-Paajarvi
Smith-Lindberg-Ryan
Wolanin-Ceci
Harpur-DeMelo
Borowiecki-Jaros
No word on a starting goalie as of yesterday but it would make a whole lot of sense to go back to Anders Nilsson against his former team. Puck drop is many, many moons away. 10:00 PM.
No time for a pregame nap though because the Belleville Senators are playing their ACTUAL biggest game of the year tonight against that damn Tom Pyatt and the rest of the Utica Comets. SeawaySensFan has promised to stream it for us, by the way.
The Ottawa game is available on TSN5, RDS and on Sportsnet Pacific if you want to hear John Garrett reminisce about his time as the NHL’s best-dressed goalie.
Yeesh.
Here’s a beautiful head to head table to cleanse the pallet.
| HEAD2HEAD |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Record | 25-41-6 (56 pts) | 31-32-10 (72 pts) |
| Goals For | 2.96 (T-15th) | 2.67 (T-26th) |
| Goals Against | 3.64 (T-30th) | 3.01 (17th) |
| Power Play | 19.4% (15th) | 15.3% (27th) |
| Penalty Kill | 79.5% (22nd) | 80.8% (14th) |
| Shots For | 30.0 (24th) | 29.6 (25th) |
| Shots Against | 36.0 (31st) | 31.5 (16th) |
| Leading Scorers | Tierney- 45 pts Ryan- 37 pts Tkachuk- 36 pts |
Pettersson- 61 pts Horvat- 54 pts Boeser- 51 pts |
| Starting Goalie | Anders Nilsson (TBC) 10-9-0 2.85 GAA, .917 sv% |
Jacob Markstrom 26-20-9 2.71 GAA, .915 |
