After grinding out a win against the lowly Toronto Maple Leafs last night, the Ottawa Senators return home to take on one of the league’s top teams.
Beating an AHL-calibre line up is one thing but the Senators will have to be a whole lot better if they want to have a chance against the Dallas Stars- the league’s highest scoring team.
This Dallas team is having another great regular season but it remains to be seen whether they have enough to seriously contend in a difficult Western Conference. They have a ton of talent up front in Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Jason Spezza. They get production from the back end, primarily from John Klingberg (although he won’t play tonight) and the combination of Antti Niemi and Kari Lehtonen have been uhh good enough.
Do they have what it takes to go through say…St. Louis, Chicago and then one of Anaheim or Los Angeles? It certainly won’t be easy.
It’s obviously not as significant as Dion Phaneuf’s return to Toronto last night but you can be sure this is a game Jason Spezza had circled on his calendar. He’s already been back to Ottawa once but this will obviously be a game with a little extra meaning for the former Senators’ Captain. He played more than 680 games of his NHL career here and sits second to only Daniel Alfredsson for points in an Ottawa uniform with 687.
No morning skate for the Senators today but Dave Cameron did meet with the media this afternoon and confirm he’ll make just one change to his line up as Patrick Wiercioch comes out and Mike Kostka goes in. Wiercioch is apparently a little banged up. Here’s how the Senators are expected to line up for this one.
Smith-Pageau-Stone
Dzingel-Gomez-Ryan
Paul-Zibanejad-Chiasson
Hoffman-Lazar-Neil
Methot-Karlsson
Phaneuf-Ceci
Kostka-Wideman
Andrew Hammond gets another start for the Senators. Puck drop scheduled for just after 5:00 PM
